


• I * 


0 ' A » 


* aV 

a 9 ^ *> 


• • o 



•*•- A «‘ ,. V 0 *° ,.., V 

v** \WMm* 


* a ^ 1 * J 

; W • 



• A< > o 

* av r^> « 


\ <y sJs&l? °o sJm£* ^ o° . 
im. r*. « .••S^V. -. 4 ? ttiUfc** * -•- 


e ■ ♦ 


**o« 


bV 



V > . . C '% ^~' J i ' . • • , %.* '* 

D * fl # CV. Vv *!*A»f* 



*0 ^j, ,# «r 

^ v(V«l .' 


» ^ °-* \ 

...•■,y n 

-y..- 

v"V * _ . 

•%. v*SkP.* <&• ■.* * 

Vs, *'VV>* A <". * 

9 » » * *^-4 , t • 9 . <£. 

. bV" .j a’- 

r ' *°V 

. .* cP 4 *. 

*>y 



• » ■» 





...*\/ %**■ 

v *«*,?* ^ 

4* J? % •^Sspv’ V * 

”*** ^ 0 ' , ^ A< V 

f\ • « • • ♦ ♦ ri .< v 



. 0 ' .•VI'♦ "V V » 

A® . vragv . <*. A> ,* 

&>«.* •Hi', v • 

><* l^SRStf • c^^rv - 

- cF ^ * 




* 9 , l* f ^ 

t*«. «V V 

- 4 / *jralV» a 

"W* *iS%: W 

'o» > 




^ .«.' ~xft ' v<^%irAf s • %^5^$xy* , v ° .4-' ~«o ''v^^/r' 

V f ’ *«- a 0 «L*nL> v v % C' 


• NO- .«?, 



• * ° " 


*£» 

*-•# CV Ap 

L° cP * - 

« ^ V 

* ^ % • 





* 'W^ 0 - «p» 



_ . - „ „ 4 ^ ’- wg ^ y 

7Z % A '«*.** <cr V **v!«* A 

« V * • * QV o 0 * « ^ '^Q _^V « 1 * ** 

^ ^„« 0 .v^M*. % y /M^*. ^ ft « c 



A* a.^ 

<S> * ® * 0 9 V 

• -> v 




•• ^ # - 
- vv 


V * !*_?<* 'C 




• *£* 

: **%« • 
; /\ \ 


■**0 

4?-v ••«>,• y 

A». * wpvWvOx* ' K* _, 

d* * « a,» c 

-V .‘4«lfek*. ^ ^ .V 



* y% '• 

.-* A^ V**^T-\<V 

0 /^SK*. ° <J , J XMX' X^A 

, O V * ■* <A f\ v 


V*V 


* * <3 uv . 1 

* .<L V rl» - 



°x> 



o * _0 <iN 

.*•!'%* Ap <J> ^bkO 0 ,/$* 

aP *1^/ ^ 

• v*^ A «" ♦■A^vSJ/S: ** ,-0> 

: X** >'Mm i\ Xy : 

* yv •JPIfP: y 





•»* A ^ *° •» 

■♦ :m^*. ^o 4 • 

.4 c> 





V*^V' ^ 

v’ • »••- cv a0 *j^L> 

*. v a 4, .*■ 

: » 

• JlV-V " 

4 J? ”■£. * <y tf v 

'»* V *r^T* A <,'...- 

♦o vJ> .4'., ^ 

♦ O v]^ Sar/rTfr** %» Ci 

*. ^O v 4 •§$[&&- ^o 4 

; 4.°-v -e^»* 

O +'*<tir~'% t y> A* Xfr c 

- <y *»toL‘ r A' v v * * • o» 

i * A/ * ^ 

e n I- * 


0 V o °A* ♦ _ 'O. 



^ ^ 4 - 
* 



♦ y x '• 

** 4 a^ \**Wa j 

•■•, V^' • 1 ' *» 9 - 

■'.. o .A s&tifo;, r* & 

■ ^ :£M&Z. ++($ 


* aP v Ca. • 

4 v 



.0 o 


°^> 




« ^ ' •• • 
,0* *\V% V J 
c y^Str%- a^ 


* 0 


C\ - 

Xu * 9 ,,' A- ^ 

o «^ a s rfsfak . y. 

°. j,<i :M3ik' yr : 



O O. ► * \P T/V 

%. -.v..*y %"y .y 

V » 1 • •* * 0 V 

■ “• “ *. v y .*■ 


* A v %■ 


r * aJ> ^ • | 


* aV-«*> o 

• 4 ^ ^ • 



Pi* /► ^ # ®«** <S> <x *^\T* a 

■}?.'“’•'% <r sJ&LIrX y ''rf&L'X < 




■^o 4 


« «5 '-J* 

-v *>'<)!^. y < 
'V. *•»•* y 






WHAT MEN NEED MOST 


Rev. DANIEL A. POLING, utt.d., ll.d. 




WHAT MEN NEED MOST 

and Other Sermons 


Rev. DANIEL A. POLING, litt.d., ll.d. 

'V 

CO-MINISTER AT THE MARBLE COLLEGIATE CHURCH 

NEW YORK 


NEW 
GEORGE H. 



YORK 


DORAN COMPANY 


~bX ‘ifz-' 1 

n 


COPYRIGHT, 1923, 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


1 



©C1A760GD6 

WHAT MEN NEED MOST. II 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

NOV -1 I9?3 


VO / 



To 

MY FRIEND 

CHESTER PAUL GATES 

and 


TO THE MEMORY OF OTHER FRIENDS 
GONE BUT NOT AWAY 



FOREWORD 


The first twenty-three chapters which follow contain 
several sermons which have appeared in the columns 
of the Christian Herald and the Christian Endeavor 
World . Appreciation is expressed to these publications 
for the privilege of including the material in this vol¬ 
ume. Among sermons preached in connection with the 
pulpit programme of the Marble Collegiate Church will 
be found several that were prepared for special oc¬ 
casions,—Easter, Christmas, New Year’s and the birth¬ 
day anniversaries of Washington and Lincoln. Two 
chapters contain as many special citizenship sermons, 
and there are three that appeared first as a series, 
“Erom the Service.” The eight concluding chapters 
are “Sermon Stories” delivered before young people 
on special occasions and as part of carefully planned 
programmes. 


D. A. P. 







CONTENTS 


PAGE 


1 , What Men Need Most .... 13 

2 Clown or King ?.25 

3 , The Greatest Fact of History . . 36 

4 Three Facts and a Question ... 46 

5 Dead King or Living Lord ? ... 58 

6. Remember Jesus Christ .... 68 

7. What the Devil Asked .... 76 

8. The Grip that Holds .... 86 

9 Daniel, the Hebrew Who Purposed . 95 

10 Extremity and Opportunity . . . 102 

11 Conquerors of Circumstance . . . Ill 

12 From the Manger to the Throne . . 122 

13 We Finish to Begin.132 

14 The Light that Has Never Failed . . 141 

15 The Call of the New Crusade . . . 145 

16 The Curse of Cowardice .... 154 

IT Come On! Let’s Go! . . .... 158 

18 “Lafayette, We Are Here !” . . . 166 

19 Who Won the War? .... 176 

20 . What Is War? .187 

21 Civic Grafters . ., . ., . 192 

ix 




X 

22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 

28 

29 

30 

31 


PAGE 

200 

205 

207 

210 

212 

214 

218 

221 

226 

230 


Contents 


Personal Liberty 
Homesick .... 
The Man Who Was Pardoned 
Lead On, Lord Jesus ! . 

“Unto the jleast” 

A Heart Story . 

“He Did It” .... 
My First Prayer 
A Father’s Dilemma . 

The Land of Time Enough 





WHAT MEN NEED MOST 




1 

WHAT MEN NEED MOST 

Text: St. John 12:21. “Sir, we would see 
J esus” 

For the maintenance of physical life there are four 
absolute necessities,—oxygen, water, food and sleep. 

Without air one can live only the briefest time. Shut 
it off, and almost immediately begins the torture of 
suffocation. A little more than five years ago a group 
of forty men found themselves in the horror of im¬ 
pending mustard-gas immersion, standing together in a 
closely sealed dugout room of Kambecourt, north from 
Toul in France. The lantern light played fitfully upon 
the figures whose faces were covered with masks; the 
earth about trembled from the vibrations of great guns 
just behind and overhead. Ninety minutes passed, and 
eyes were starting from their- sockets, blood was seep¬ 
ing from mucous membranes, bodies were wracked with 
almost unendurable agonies. Then, with swelling 
glands and fairly bursting lungs, men fought to keep 
their reason. When- relief came, and the place was 
unsealed, to those who staggered out, it was as though 
a hell had opened into heaven. 

One may survive longer without water. I have 

never known the extreme torture of thirst. But what 

a relief is a spring in a desert ! What a comfort a 

living stream in the wilderness! And we city dwellers 

learn to respond with a measure of enthusiasm that 

13 


I 


14 


What Men Need Most 

reaches at times a restrained ecstasy, to the singing of 
a faucet. We are troubled when an unusually long, 
dry season has diminished our water reserves to the 
point where caution must be observed, and where some 
may feel a lack, both in quality and quantity. The 
lawns become a distressing sight. What richness many 
of the figures of the Psalmist and similes of Jesus have 
for us, in such a time; “As the hart panteth after the 
water brooks,”—and “Take of the water of salvation.” 

It is not many years since practically every large city 
of America was subject to periodical typhoid epidemics, 
because of impure drinking water. Now our great com¬ 
munities are in almost every instance immune to this 
former plague. Even isolated cases are becoming 
rare. 

A few weeks ago I found myself following the high 
climbing forest trail that leads to the mountain lake 
which is the natural reservoir of Portland, Oregon. 
After leaving the automobile at the point where the 
great water mains begin and where all ordinary trans¬ 
portation ceases, thirty miles from the city itself, we 
travelled on horseback for twenty-one miles through a 
veritable sylvan paradise; firs towered above us a hun¬ 
dred and thirty feet “in the clear” before their limbs 
began. Where the trail dipped toward the river which 
carries the lake to the huge pipes below, the ferns stood 
higher than our heads as we sat our horses, and once we 
came upon a cedar forty-eight feet in circumference. 
In twenty-one miles we passed or crossed one hundred 
and thirty-six living springs or swiftly flowing moun¬ 
tain torrents; or one such natural fountain flowing into 
that central river from the north as it hurried downward 
from the great lake to quench the city’s thirst, for every 
two hundred and seventy yards of that little more than 


15 


What Men Need Most 

twenty miles. And later our wonderment was to be 
further increased, when we saw the river itself issue 
from the face of the mountain, as though from the very 
breast of nature. For half a mile it flows under¬ 
ground beneath the range. The unfailing lake, fed 
by springs and snows, hung high among the emerald 
hills, has no outlet human eye may see. Tens of thou¬ 
sands of people in the valley below have a gigantic and 
perfect natural water filter, the like of which is found 
nowhere else in the world. Yes, there is life or death 
in a city’s drinking cup. “Water or I die,” is one of 
the inexorable physical ultimatums. 

One may survive longer still without food; but what 
a terrifying sight starvation is, whether it be a colossal 
spectacle spread across the high plateau of Armenia or 
the bleak steppes of Russia, or whether we come upon it 
in the tenderly kept chamber of the invalid whose mal¬ 
ady no longer permits nourishment to be taken. Ringing 
in my ears as I turn back in thought across the years, 
is the cry of a little boy who could not eat,—a little boy 
about to die: “Bread, bread! I am hungry,—give me 
bread.” Ah, we do well to open our purses at the invi¬ 
tation of such agencies as the Rear East Relief. And 
in our great American cities there is always the threat 
of starvation for some, a threat we dare not ignore. 

But the question of food has become tremendously 
complicated in our time. The abandoned farms of Rew 
England are a growing cause of anxiety,—the falling 
price of wheat a growing menace. Has it ever occurred 
to you that Rew York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, 
Boston, and the rest, are helpless, and perhaps pres¬ 
ently starving, giants? They cannot feed themselves, 
and their country cousins seem to be tiring of the task. 
What a problem is here suggested,—a problem that a 


16 


What Men Need Most 

congressional grain subsidy will never solve; a problem 
that has to .do with foreign markets, quite as much as 
it has to do with domestic markets; a problem that is 
as international as it is internal; a problem, my > 
friends, that our so-called “splendid isolation 77 has not 
solved nor lessened. 

In its more personal aspects, its more individual 
phases, the question of food is to-day not at all as it 
was even a decade ago. “Have you had your calories V 9 
is a modern query; “How to Live , 77 the standard text 
of the Life Extension Institute, a rather recent publi¬ 
cation. But I am not one to decry the science of cor¬ 
rect eating, nor would I belittle the profession of the 
dietitian. My observations convince me that to-day 
more people are eating themselves to death than other¬ 
wise. Conditions have changed since the clearing of 
the pioneer, with the forests and streams surrounding 
it, provided practically everything he and his sturdy 
outdoor family ate; and our manner of life is so dif¬ 
ferent now that for us to eat what and as our fathers 
ate, is suicide, nor is it always slow. 

A few years since I awoke to find myself spending 
nearly all of my time in my study; doing practically 
no physical labour, but remaining absolutely faithful to 
the meat, bread and Irish potato menu of my days in 
the sawmill and logging camp. Modern white bread, 
we are told by practical scientists, paves the way to a 
vast number of physical ailments for our children. 
You who recall, as I do, the steaming, vast and fragrant 
loaves of our unscientific childhood, will do well to be 
reminded, as I have been, that white bread is different 
now; that the perfections of the modern miller’s art 
have refined it until it is of itself alone, too fine to hold 
the coarse and sturdy elements that in a cruder time 


What Men Need Most 


17 


made brawn and brain. Ah, how far-reaching and how 
complicated has become that simple cry of a hungry 
child, “Bread, bread! I am hungry; give me bread.” 

Again, one may survive longer without sleep; but 
one of the most excruciating tortures of the Dark Ages 
was the walking agony; the keeping of prisoners awake 
until they became gibbering idiots or fell dead before 
their inquisitors. Life, without the complete relaxation 
of sleep, is impossible. Some require more sleep than 
others; children are especially dependent upon it; a 
distinguished inventor is said to get along famously 
with an almost unbelievably short time in bed. But 
no man can long survive absolute insomnia. How much 
attention our physician gives to our sleeping habits 
now. Are you subject to cold ? What does the health 
column in your daily paper say ? “Lots of fresh water; 
good, nourishing food regularly, and at least eight hours 
of sleep in twenty-four,—at least eight.” 

I am entirely out of harmony with the night schedules 
of many American homes,—dances, theatre parties and 
moonlight rides for juveniles make pale and puny 
people to do the world’s work, and plan the world’s 
play. Back to the old motto, “Early to bed and early 
to rise,”—but with the emphasis, the immediate em¬ 
phasis for our great cities, upon “Early to bed.” 

And now, because there are some sadly troubled 
people who are having a hard time to follow their doc¬ 
tor’s prescription, who are, as I once fought, fighting 
to fall asleep, let me say just these words of encourage¬ 
ment. We really sleep more than we think we do. 
Slumber is swift while sleeplessness is appallingly 
slow. One hour, two hours, and three pass as an age, 
while the rest of the night is a flash. And men who 
know, tell us that we also have wee naps we do not 


18 


What Men Need Most 


remember, that we “drop off” when we are quite sure 
we have been boring holes in the darkness with wide¬ 
awake eyes unceasingly. And at any rate, no person 
ever wins sleep who fights for her. After an accident 
of some time ago, when for many nights I had turned 
back insomnia’s anguish with only poor success, a wise 
practitioner said, “Well, to-night begin by saying, ‘I’ll 
not worry; I’ll rest, since I cannot sleep. I’ll rest 
eight hours, or two,—rest with my eyes open until they 
fall closed; I’ll have repose and relaxation. Others get 
along with five hours; I’ll be comfortable with as many 
or less!’ ” And the big principle buried in my friend’s 
counsel had its vindication,—immediately I began to 
recover. 

But sleep goes along with air, food and water. These 
four absolute necessities are strangely as well as 
strongly related. Let the organs of respiration be 
affected by impure or poisoned air, and we become the 
victims of wild nightmares and dream terrors; and have 
we not all of us learned the folly of asking the mind to 
carry repose while the stomach is burdened with the 
mixed dainties of modem man’s gastronomic adven¬ 
tures ? 

Yes, for the maintenance of physical life, there are 
four absolute necessities,—oxygen, water, food and 
sleep. 

But if life is to be more and better than bare exist¬ 
ence, there are other necessities; if life is to be well- 
rounded, fruitful and happy, we must have more than 
bread to live by. The lowliest brute breathes, drinks, 
eats and sleeps, and remains a brute. 

On our physical side we will do well to consider the 
claims of exercise, especially we of the office and bank, 
who have a tendency to waist extension rather than 



19 


What Men Need Most 

chest expansion. Now and then one finds the exception 
to the rule. I have known a man of eighty who was hale 
and hearty in spite of the fact that habitually he never 
walked when he could ride, and who slept with his 
windows tightly closed. Such an exception proves the 
rule for most of us, however. 

Nest and recreation are necessities, too. From the 
fierce clamours of our cities we must periodically find 
relief, or become nervous wrecks, and, worse, nerve 
mannikins. We need to place another emphasis upon 
recreation and make it in our vacation season, in our 
holiday, however short, a re- creation. Unless we do, 
we will find ourselves dreaming of times when we will 
turn aside to enjoy a well-earned relaxation, and play, 
but coming into an early old age, a premature decrepi¬ 
tude, with our dreams unrealised. 

I have seen a mansion of a hundred rooms on Long 
Island, which the builder never occupied. He died at 
his desk the day before he was to have moved in. The 
newspaper accounts stated among other things that he 
had never taken a vacation. 

But perhaps our order has been inverted. To place 
an emphasis upon rest and recreation implies that 
work has a large and fundamental place in the scheme 
of life. Is it not an absolute necessity to generous, 
worth-while living? Pity the person without a task, 
a task worth giving body and heart to. The electrical 
wizard Steinmetz was credited with saying, a little 
while ago, that presently electricity would be so applied 
as to make possible doing the menial, the drudgery 
tasks of society, in four hours out of the twenty-four, 
leaving for us all, twenty in which to find repose and 
enjoyment. Even with such a programme, such a divi¬ 
sion of time, the world would be far from an ideal 


20 


What Men Need Most 


society unless our minds and souls had been schooled 
to appreciate and rightly use the time. 

I have known men and women who really seemed to 
love that which others called drudgery,—the old cob¬ 
bler of our childhood town, the venerable farmer who 
made our first time away from home a garden of happy 
recollections, and the singing laundress who said that 
she preferred washing (and that before the day of 
power washers) to dusting. These had a philosophy 
that others would be happier for learning. Perhaps if 
I cannot come into the task that I have longed for, I 
can fall in love with the one that I have. 

Ah, and how friends have become a necessity,—an 
absolute necessity in my life! Who would live without 
them? And could we? Unconsciously we lean upon 
them; they are part of our unexposed, innermost being, 
—true friends, I mean, deeply true, vastly intimate, 
friends who are not questioned and could not be. With 
such a friend I stood one evening by the open grave 
of another friend, and later when I spoke of our in¬ 
frequent visits, our irregular letters, our wide separa¬ 
tions, he replied, “Yes, and how great a thing it is to 
possess a friendship that does not stand at last upon 
even its most delightful forms, that does not depend 
upon pen or contact or speech!’’ 

Again, life needs to-day, needs imperatively, a great 
ambition. Woe is the man who never hears a high 
call, in whose ears never sounds a mighty shout of 
challenge. Woe is such a man, for his character has 
in it a fatal defect; something,—something vital, has 
been left out. A great English mountain-climber on 
being asked why he took the risks involved in climbing 
Mt. Blanc, replied, “Because Mt. Blanc is there.” 
When I read of each fresh attempt to swim the English 


21 


What Men Need Most 

Channel, I find something elemental stirring within 
my own breast. 

Do I hear yon say, “A useless waste of time and 
energy” ? Well, nearly so, I grant, but at least an 
indication of the fact that the divine fire burns and 
needs only to be given a better torch. Another follows 
the same gleam to find an elusive disease germ and iso¬ 
late it. Youth, with the passion of it in his blood, 
dedicates his life to a great cause; becomes a Gough, 
or John G. Woolley of prohibition, a Love joy or Gar¬ 
rison of emancipation; a Lincoln of patriotism. 

Ah, and the distraught times in which we live wait 
on men and women to hear high ambition’s call to-day. 
The East Side of Jacob Riis is crying for his spiritual 
descendants. A thousand cities of this continent alone 
need as many Hull Houses, and the terrifying war 
clouds which stand again along the horizon of Europe 
remind us that we have done little enough to keep our 
promise; that we have scarcely inconvenienced our¬ 
selves to strengthen society against the bloody-mawed 
monster of armed conflict. What a generation for the 
soul of ardent, generous, Jehovah-led youth to come 
upon! Here is the new impossible to be dared; here 
is the new earth waiting for new-born men and women 
to give it birth. 

We have come quite naturally now to what man needs 
most—to his supreme necessity. Is it health ? Ho. 
Is it water? Ho, it is not. Is it food? Ho. Is it 
sleep? Ho, it is none of these nor is it all of them. 
Hor is it rest, recreation, friends, work, ambition; nor 
is it the divine fire of an overwhelming compulsion. 
What does man need most ? 

But first we must know two things about man,—these 
two things. Where does he come from—what is he? 


22 


What Men Need Most 

And where is he going—what is he to be? There are 
certain living creatures which die when their physical 
environment is changed; in these species tragedy fol¬ 
lows tragedy, until a careful study has been made of 
the creature itself, and until the fundamental things 
about its life are known, its peculiar needs supplied. 

Thus it is with man. Give him breath and bread, 
drink and repose,—all of these,—but give him nothing 
more, and he w T ill die, for man has come from God, and 
his destiny is heaven-born. His soul is restless until 
it rests in Him: all of the physical necessities, however 
abundantly supplied, are not enough. And so, after he 
has tested every other, man comes at last, as came the 
Greeks of the text, with the importunate request, “Sir, 
we would see Jesus.” We would see Jesus, not the 
disciples, nor the high priest, but Jesus. Sir, we would 
see Jesus: We would see Jesus, for He alone can for¬ 
give our sins, cover them with the divine alchemy of 
His forgetfulness, until the corrosion of our blighting 
remorse is arrested. We would see Jesus, for He alone 
can satisfy our insatiate thirst; He alone can give us 
peace. We would see Jesus,—Jesus of the well, who 
cries, “Whosoever shall drink of this water shall thirst 
again; but whosoever shall drink of the water that I 
shall give him shall never thirst, for the water that I 
shall give him shall be in him a well of water spring¬ 
ing up into eternal life.” We would see Jesus and 
know His companionship, for earthly friends, however 
true, must fail us in the end; the father stands upon 
the threshold of the innermost chamber of his child’s 
suffering, and struggles to enter, but cannot; the 
mother bends low over the fevered brow of her now 
unconscious darling, and with travail of soul beats 
against the inexorable provision that places a limit 


23 


What Men Need Most 

upon her ministry. Ah, we would see Jesus, for He 
crosses the threshold, he takes captivity captive, and 
with Him there is no, “Thus far shalt thou come and 
no farther.” Out to the end of the world He goes with 
us; brother to every human woe is He; healer of the 
last agony; comforter of the deepest sorrow, and cap¬ 
tain of our salvation. The importunate cry of the text 
is the voice of every language; it is the voice of the 
multitude surging about these ancient foundations, the 
multitude that all unknowing passes by. Somehow 
these must be led to find Him. 

“We would see Jesus.” Men and women, do you 
hear it ? It is a supplication and a challenge,—a sup¬ 
plication and a challenge to the church first of all. One 
winter Sunday night at the close of an evangelistic 
service, in response to a special invitation, a man in 
one of the rear pews of a great church raised his hand. 
Later, while in a personal conference with the minister, 
he confessed his sins to his Maker, called upon the 
name of his Saviour, and found forgiveness and peace. 
His first words, as he rose from his knees, will remain 
with that preacher so long as he lives. O Church of 
God, hear them; these were the words, spoken not in 
bitterness, but in great surprise,—“How does it happen 
that for twenty years, because I promised my mother, 
I have been going to at least one church service every 
week, sometimes Catholic, sometimes Protestant, and 
last Sunday night was the first time I was ever given 
a chance to get to the foot of the Cross ?” Sir, we would 
see Jesus! 

That cry sounds like a wail of death above the rav¬ 
ished cities of the Hear East where so-called Christian 
nations have signed the terms of Mahomet the bloody. 
“We would see Jesus. We have seen the statesmen and 


24 


What Men Need Most 


the warriors; we have heard their promises, and in a 
delirium of joy have shouted the praises of those we 
acclaimed as our emancipators, only to find that again 
we had been deceived. Now we, a broken remnant, in 
hospitals and refugee camps, in orphanages and secluded 
mountain fastnesses,—we would see Jesus.” 

This is the cry of every division in our complicated 
society. I hear it in the coal conferences and in steel— 
We would see Jesus! and see Jesus it is or know again 
the hardship of strike and of lockout; see Jesus and 
find the Jesus way, or fail, fail and face again the 
empty furnace of the poor and the bitterness of indus¬ 
trial strife. 

Here is a programme in idealism,—and only such a 
programme has even the promise of success. All others 
have already and absolutely failed. Here is a pro¬ 
gramme in idealism founded upon the Decalogue and 
illumined by the light that lighteth every man coming 
into the world: a programme in idealism that declares 
its ultimatums in terms like these: “Thou shalt not 
kill; thou shalt not covet; thou shalt not steal; thou 
shalt not bear false witness;” and that trumpets its 
great summation, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.” 

Only one thing remains to be said. Those who came 
seeking Jesus in the story of the text, sought an intro¬ 
duction from those who knew Him. The supreme busi¬ 
ness of the Christian Church is the introducing of men 
and women and society to Jesus Christ. But only those 
who know Him themselves are competent to introduce 
others to Him. 

It is the cry of a dying world: Sir, we would see 
Jesus. My friends, are we, we of the church, prepared 
to answer that cry? 


2 

CLOWN OR KING? 

Text: Proverbs 23: 7. “For as he thinketh 
in his heart so is he.” 

In other times the difference between a clown and a 
king was frequently the distance between a step and 
a throne. They were very close together, hut with this 
distinction,—one sat or grovelled at the feet of the 
other. As a rule, one thing they had in common,— 
the accident of birth. Each was as he was born,—a 
clown or a king, a fool or a monarch; one wore a cap, 
the other a crown; one held a bauble, the other a 
sceptre. And it is whispered that there were instances 
in which headdress might have been exchanged and 
stations reversed, without grief to society. 

To-day the clown and the king are physically even 
closer together, though in reality they are farther apart; 
for now, by the measure of his thinking, a man is a 
clown or a king. Eor as he,—fool or monarch,—think* 
eth in his heart, so is he. 

The words, more literally translated, are, “For, as he 

calculates with himself, so is he,” and in their setting 

refer to a selfish and evil-minded host who while he 

with words urges his guests to enjoy his viands, in his 

heart resents their presence at his table. With fine 

directness the Psalmist tells us that such a host is not 

as his words or his wealth, but as his thinking; that he 

25 


26 What Men Need Most 

is little and mean because of bis thoughts, that his cal¬ 
culations, the arithmetic of his soul, make him a clown. 

If we accept this standard, if we apply the text, birth 
and station have little if anything at all to do with 
civilisation’s real aristocracy. For, as men and women 
think, deeply think, so they are,—clowns or kings. 

But we are surrounded to-day,—and it is, I suppose, 
quite natural for us to feel, as never before,—with temp¬ 
tations to think small and cynical thoughts. Surely the 
times are selfish. Men of large affairs have been almost 
daily quoted as saying that following the war the motto 
of business seemed to be, “Make up for lost time,—get 
yours and get it quick.” Government investigations 
still incomplete reveal a sickening degree of faithless¬ 
ness and an appalling amount of profiteering on the 
homeward side of the Atlantic. Recently the daily 
press carried a story of peonage in Florida that makes 
Uncle Tom’s Cabin look like a pallid nursery story,— 
a boy sent to a convict camp for being a trespasser on 
a freight train, sent into slavery by a county sheriff 
who was given $20.00 a head for each man delivered 
to this particular lumber company, a sheriff who on his 
own testimony disregarded a registered letter from the 
lad’s family and ordered a misleading message returned. 
Picture, if you will, this under-nourished youth from 
a respectable Dakota home, who had rashly started out 
to see the world,—and while you do so, remember your 
own youth:—working ankle-deep in the swamp muck, 
stricken with weakness, smitten with fever, stumbling 
and falling; and then hear the sing of a seven-pound 
mule-whip as it wraps itself around that white back for 
a hundred lashes, and as for extra measure the flogger 
beats his helpless prisoner’s head with its weighted 
handle. Remember, men and women of a proud civili- 


27 


Clown or King? 

sation, that this murder occurred in connection ‘with a 
state-wide system, and in America,—the United States 
of America,—under the sanction of law, and on the 
estate of a law-maker, at the hands of a duly-authorised 
brute who worked for a legally incorporated lumber 
company. 

Heaven pity us for feeling ourselves superior to the 
Turk and for looking askance at the Bolshevist. The 
record of our American civilisation in peonage, in 
lynchings, where the black man has been the chief vic¬ 
tim, in child-labour and in industrial slavery, for the 
last quarter century, is, at times, and in spots, enough 
to shame us before God and man. It should send us 
in sackcloth and ashes to the feet of the one who said, 
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of one of 
these ... ye have done it unto me.” 

So far as I am concerned, I do not hold myself as 
free of the shame, merely because my hands did not 
swing that instrument of torture. I am an American, 
and until these evil matters have been adjusted, these 
wrongs righted, these blasphemies against the democ¬ 
racy Washington and his associates established, and 
Abraham Lincoln suffered martyrdom to save,—until 
these blasphemies, I say, have been utterly repudiated 
by law, and completely destroyed in practice, I shall 
feel myself as one citizen, to the reach of my voice and 
the limit of my ability, responsible . 

Yes, our present environment has a tendency to in¬ 
spire cynical and small thinking. The Hew York 
Times of April 18th, 1923, carried a statement from 
Commissioner Haynes, saying that thirty-three Federal 
enforcement agents had been killed outright by boot¬ 
leggers while in the line of duty,—murdered by liquor 
outlaws, and that more than three hundred others had 



28 


What Men Need Most 


suffered gunshot wounds of a more or less serious na¬ 
ture,—and we still have a laugh for a bootlegger’s joke! 
By the sorrow of the widows and the fatherless of these 
thirty-three who died in defence of the law,—not this 
law alone, but the law that protects us, ; —I cry 
Shame. 

Again, the experiences of our own lives have a tend¬ 
ency to incite the mind to morbid thinking. Where are 
the dreams, the hopes of youth, or, as the poet has it, 
“the loves of yesteryear” ? Behind the majority of you 
are little shoes in treasure-boxes,—tiny things that were 
never worn out; faded roses of memory in dusty frames 
of recollection; or houses of high ambition that were 
mortgaged to the necessity of a fateful hour of need; 
or the perfidy of a business associate perhaps, or, yet 
more terrible, the treason of a friend; failure in busi¬ 
ness, the tumbled ruins of a structure raised by 
economy and self-denial and the calloused hands of 
hard work; or physical visitations that have bowed a 
once-proud form and lined a smooth and placid brow 
with the deep furrows of pain unutterable. And be¬ 
hind all of us is disillusionment,—we have come to 
know the world, each other,—and—ourselves. Once 
we believed all things and hoped all things; now we 
count the cost; anticipate the settlement, doubt the 
wisdom of the enterprise, for time has led us to the 
tree of knowledge, and we have eaten of its bitter 
fruit. 

Yes, our own experiences make royal thinking dif¬ 
ficult. It is not hard to dream when you lie in the 
sunshine upon the green grass of unenlightened child¬ 
hood. Then it is not hard to hope and plan. To-day 
we stand mature and scared by old graves, beneath skies 
that have frowned at least as often as they have smiled. 


Clown or King? 29 

In the once-shining casket that our youth gave us is a 
pierced and shrunken heart. 

The log of any city church for a single week is mel¬ 
ancholy reading,—men out of work; home providers 
sick; mothers distracted; children undernourished. 
Yes, the times in which we exist are conducive to in¬ 
fidelity in thought. 

But do you think that I would have said as much 
as I have said, if this were all to he said? With the 
facts before me, with these experiences, many of them 
blazed upon my body and my soul, I bring a message 
not of despair, but one altogether of hope. These suf¬ 
ferings and disappointments and disillusionments and 
tragedies do not make you a pessimist, a cynic, an in¬ 
fidel, a mental clown. Ho, only your thinking. As 
you think in your heart, in your innermost mind,— 
and the Hebrew word here may be translated mind 
as well as heart,—as you think in your innermost 
mind, that you are. Are you broken, wrecked in body, 
ruined in purse, bereft in loved ones, forgotten, de¬ 
serted, defeated ? If you would rise from the steps of 
the clown to the throne, if you would be king, then claim 
imperial thoughts and think a king. 

A man lay upon a white bed with consciousness just 
returning, and with consciousness came pain,—pain 
excruciating, unbearable, destroying. The opiates 
brought the mercy of stupor; then consciousness, again 
with pain. Days passed and weeks. One morning the 
sufferer, now a convalescent, turned his eyes toward the 
window, just in time to see a tiny spider cast off from 
the awning and drop with his first web cable to an 
anchorage on the sill. Bor hours now the man lay with 
his eyes upon that marvellous spectacle, the spinning 
of a web. He became less conscious of his body as he 


30 


What Men Need Most 

‘took new life^within his mind; he was like a child, and 
with the secretiveness of a child,—and as a result came 
tragedy. The nurse rolled up the awning at sunset, and 

^destroyed the half-spun web. 

The man was senselessly, violently, disturbed, and 
had a very bad night; but when his mind had cleared 
from the sleeping potion in the morning, and he turned 
again, half fearfully, toward the window, the little fel¬ 
low was busy once more and now in safety, for even the 
nurse would not risk another outburst on the part of 
her patient. The spider went on to complete his task, 
.and through' the long August days he swung there in 
his castle*and den, ’twixt the sunlight and shadow, while 
the watcher’s mind caught the glory of the lesson and 
his will set itself to the herculean task of building up 
again the broken walls of his body. 

It is not the experience that makes you what you 
are,—it is your thinking. Paul wrote Philippians,— 
his joy letter, his epistle of gladness,—while chained 
and in a Roman dungeon. “I thank God for -every 
remembrance of you, always in every prayer uf mine 
for you all, making request with joy.” Thus does the 
prisoner, the buffeted, flogged, stoned and ship-wrecked, 
herald of the cross, thank God for remembrance, and 
pray with joy. It is not the experience that makes you 
what you are,—it is what you think. 

And this same period of history which sees us re- 
luctantly and under pressure abolishing flogging and 
convict leasing,—this same generation which sees so- 
called Christian nations exploiting oil concessions at 
the expense of Christian minorities, and throwing a 
gambler’s dice down the line of international boun¬ 
daries,—which witnesses sabotage on the one hand and 
industrial slavery on the other, which crucifies priests 


31 


Clown or King? 

in Russia and lynches negroes in America, this same 
generation has produced the wireless, that phantom 
ministry of enlightenment and pleasure which makes 
the ether above us a shoreless sea of song, hearing 
richly laden ships of culture; has found new worlds 
beyond the suns above us and new riches beneath our 
feet, has given us a way of travel down the path of the 
lightnings, has brought to our suffering humanity new 
cures for disease, relief and postponement for incurable 
maladies and has enlarged the key of charity until now 
it opens the world’s store-house to supply the world’s 
need. 

As another has written, and whatever the time and 
circumstance, “You are what you think you are,”— 
clean or filthy, hopeful or despairing, weak or strong, 
rich or poor, you are what you think you are. Schiller’s 
dying cry was “Give me a great thought.” What a 
morning prayer that is for all of us! “Give me a great 
thought!” 

I have a friend whose chamber window overlooks 
the Hudson, and we have stood together there with the 
sunlight marching down the Palisades. As I listened 
to him describe the morning and the noon, the evening 
and the twilight, and as we followed their pathways 
across the majestic plane of the water, I saw not the 
Hudson, but my friend. Great thoughts have come to 
him upon the tide of that mighty river. 

It is springtime; Central Park is wearing her green 
carpets and her tapestries of emerald and sapphire; 
presently her hair will be braided with flowers, and 
the trees of her gardens alive with the songs of many 
birds, while around her at night a million stars will 
shine out from house windows, blending with God’s 
candles set in the sky, until the imperial city’s breath- 


32 


What Men Need Most 


ing place will seem an island world, afloat upon a silver 
sea. All, great thoughts will come to you if you visit 
Central Park in the springtime. 

Go and stand in front of the venerable municipal 
building of America’s largest city and look up, fol¬ 
lowing the chaste and regal lines of the Wool worth 
tower, the “cathedral of commerce,” until you rest your 
gaze at last upon the clouds that ride before the waves 
of the winds that break upon her topmost spires. Then 
there will come to you that for which the dying Schiller 
cried. 

I have found it in the desert and among the moun¬ 
tains and on the sea, in the soiled face of a little gamin 
of the street, in the homecoming welcome of my dog; 
in the laughter of playing children, in the warping in 
of an ocean liner, in the discordant clatter of coal pour¬ 
ing into a cellar,—telling of the red in its black. I 
have found it in steaming dugouts where men wrapped 
bandages about wounded bodies, and in battle grave¬ 
yards where crosses were as plentiful as the pines upon' 
my native mountains. I have found it in the house of 
the living and in the chamber of the dead, in singing 
and in weeping, in love and in laughter, in sickness 
and in health, in prosperity and adversity,—that for 
which the dying Schiller cried,—I have found,—a great 
thought. 

And if the text is more than a text, if it is true, then 
we must think great thoughts about ourselves. “For 
as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” and lest we 
make the mistake of a wrong emphasis at the begin- 
ning, let us remember first another text, “Let him that 
thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” And 
another, “What is man that thou (God) art mindful 
of him?” 


33 


Clown or King? 

In the last analysis we appraise ourselves. Are we 
sensual "and - brutish creatures? Yes, if we think sen¬ 
sually and as brutes; then absolutely we are. Are we 
slave-drivers in industry, Shylocks in trade, tyrants in 
our home relationships ? What are our thoughts, first; 
then I will answer. Or are we children of the king, 
brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, heirs of immor¬ 
tality, with work to do in the world, strong work, hard 
tasks, helpful ministries ? As are our innermost 
thoughts, so are we. Tennyson but puts it in another 
way when he says, “The man who can is the man who 
will,” and you remember the words of Channing Pol¬ 
lock’s hero in “The Fool,” which is a very great play. 
Answering the eager query of the little cripple girl, so 
anxious to be strong, he says, “If you believe, if you 
believe hard enough.” 

Such great thoughts about ourselves lead us into true 
humility, for in so thinking we come at last to the 
realisation of the fact that we are but the culmination 
of the past, and that we are debtors to the ages. As 
Quinet has it, “Old Chaldea, Phoenicia, Babylon, Mem¬ 
phis, Judea, Egypt, Etruria, all have had a share in my 
education, and live in me.” 

Finally, if you would reign, if you would hold a 
sceptre instead of a clown’s bauble, if you would be a 
king, identify yourself in your thinking with great 
causes, and give your life to tasks that are big and 
true. 

I met Jacob Riis just fourteen days before he started 
on his last journey. Jacob Eiis would never have been 
more than any one of a thousand push-cart merchants 
of his race had he not heard the cry of the East Side; 
as it was, Theodore Roosevelt called him the most 
useful citizen of ISTew York. Edith Cavell would have 


34 


What Men Need Most 


passed from the hospital of her service an unknown, 
had she not for truth’s sake kept a rendezvous with 
death; as it is, her words, “Patriotism is not enough,” 
will have the resiliency of youth when the marble of 
her statue is dust. Savonarola was a monk, until for 
a cause he became a martyr; now, with Lincoln and 
Calvin and Wesley and Livingstone and the rest, he 
belongs to the ages. 

It is very true that we are not and will not become 
Lincolns, but we are in a world of need and oppor¬ 
tunity. Hot all great tasks are completed. Many bur¬ 
dens are upon man, too great for him to bear alone. 
“Think on these things.” Study to find yourself. Lend 
your voice and influence and your example to law en¬ 
forcement, register against sharp practices in business, 
align yourself with movements working intelligently 
and in Christlike ways to destroy war. Give money 
and time to famine relief in the East, and far and 
near. Be alive to your duties as a citizen. Do not 
disfranchise yourself, do not make yourself in reality 
a man or a woman without a country, by remaining 
away from the polls on Election Day. Improve your 
mind by reading good literature and by hearing pro¬ 
phetic messages. Install a radio. Defuse to allow your 
own affairs, your personal, your business, your selfish 
affairs, to immerse you. There are many women and 
men who are my corroborating testimony when I say 
that fine thinking and abiding happiness are the reward 
of those who tithe (or better) their time, who return to 
God service that, measured by hours and reduced to the 
cash values of the street, represent a fortune. 

Yes, if you would think great thoughts, identify your¬ 
self with greatness in loyalty and service; live and grow 


Clown or King? 35 

in the mental and spiritual atmosphere of greatness, in 
the environment of the sublime. 

In Lake Sunapee, Hew Hampshire, Chinook salmon 
have a maximum weight of fourteen pounds; in the 
Columbia River and the sea this same royal fish attains 
a growth of sixty pounds and more. Scientists tell 
us that fish of certain species at least are large or small 
in relation to the size of the bodies of water they in¬ 
habit, that physical life in this strange way is a crea¬ 
ture of environment. 

A Hew York physician, speaking to- a father con¬ 
cerning tentative plans which the man had for taking 
his children into another section of the continent, said, 
“By all means take them if you can; it will give them 
an inch more of chest expansion and add inches to 
their height.” 

But beyond any possible truth the doctor’s words 
may contain, we are the children and the adults of 
our mental environment. Physically, intellectually, 
morally, spiritually, we are, by the measure of our 
thinking, clowns or kings. Then let me pray— 

Give me great thoughts, O God, 

Lend me the royal mind; 

Lead me where truth has trod, 

Where faith has been refined. 

I, too, would know the plan 
Thou hast to others brought,— 

Crown me, a common man, 

With high and kingly thought. 

What matters, then, my dole, 

Upon this peasant clod ? 

Within my cloistered soul 
I keep a tryst with God. 


3 

THE GREATEST FACT OF HISTORY 

Text: St.John 12:32. “And I, if I be 
lifted up from the earth f will draw all men 
unto me” 

Christianity is the greatest fact of history,—greater 
than creation, greater than discovery, greater than in¬ 
vention, greater than government. 

Creation is the act of causing to exist; creation is 
first, save only the Creator who is greater than His 
created. Christianity is the supreme product of the 
creative mind and will; also Christianity is the supreme 
expression of the mind and will of God in man. 

Discovery is a making known, as in science, educa¬ 
tion, art or exploration. Christianity is a making new; 
the recreating of the souls of men, the ways of institu¬ 
tions, and the spirit of human relationships. 

Invention is the act of devising or creating in the 
mechanical world that which has not before existed; 
Christianity has to do with inventors and is the ulti¬ 
mate expression of the best that is in them as it is the 
“summum bonum” of all others. 

Government is control, direction, order, authority, 
regulation, as of church, the home, or the affairs of 
state. Christianity is spiritual authority; the control 
of the act by the direction of the heart and will. Chris¬ 
tianity dictates and commands the motive, and rules 

36 



37 


The Greatest Fact of History 

governments by exercising dominion over tbe con¬ 
sciences of subjects. 

Christianity is the greatest fact of bistory because of 
its promises. In my father’s library was a set of books 
entitled, “Thirty Thousand Promises,” and all of these 
were taken from the pages between Genesis and Revela¬ 
tion. Promises for every age and circumstance of life 
were there, and all were the sure word of the eternal, 
all-wise and all-powerful Father in Heaven. 

Other religions have promises too, but it is safe to 
say that no follower of Confucius or Buddha or Mo¬ 
hammed would be able to stand successfully at this 
point in debate with a Christian. Where other sys¬ 
tems of faith promise extermination, the chance to 
forget and disappear, Christianity promises a glorious 
immortality ; where other religions promise a change 
of form or a later return to earth, as a new creature, 
or at best a future of self-gratification and sensual 
pleasure, Christianity promises the fulfilment of life, 
the perfecting of the soul, and the eternity of good. 

The promises of Christianity cover every condition, 
every circumstance of human experience. To me they 
find their richest expression in those words so all-com¬ 
prehensive, “As are thy days, so shall thy strength be.” 
To me that means everything; strength and healing for 
body, mind and soul. Again and again I have thrown 
myself upon that promise; again and again under the 
drive of the most extreme necessity I have turned to 
it. “As are thy days, so shall thy strength be.” 

I know a man who remembers a crucial second on a 
college oval years ago when his limbs failed and his 
spikes no longer gripped the cinders; when things went 
suddenly black before his eyes, and the control of his 
physical being had all but gone from his hands. The 


38 


What Men Need Most 

finish of the gruelling race was twenty strides away, 
and in a flash of desperation he realised that with the 
deciding event of a great meet all but won,—fairly, 
magnificently won,—for his Alma Mater, he was being 
unhanded by a muscular seizure such as every athlete 
comes to know at one time or another. And then came 
the remembrance of that promise, “As are thy days, so 
shall thy strength be,” and on it he lunged across the 
tape to victory. 

“As are thy days, so shall thy strength be.” The 
widow gathers her fatherless children under its- shelter; 
the dying turn their failing eyes toward its unfailing 
beacon; the tempted take from it grace with which to 
overcome their dearest sin; the discouraged find it 
sounding a bugle of hope. For remorse it has the 
courage of confession; for the wronged it has the sooth¬ 
ing waters of forgetfulness, and in it they find the 
blessing that comes to those who forgive. 

To the young it may be a long time unheeded, and 
for its ministry they may feel conscious of no need; 
but for youth, ardent, impetuous and wasteful, it has 
reserves of caution and conservation; while for ma¬ 
turity it has the finishing genius of high emprise. Al¬ 
ways it comes with-those superb qualities that crown 
success, and for all it releases the energies of body, 
mind and soul, that raise a task to its completion, that 
bring an endeavour, however humble, into the morning 
of its perfect day. And here lies the divine in the 
promise, here is God—this all-pervading assurance of 
perfection,—perfect health, perfect joy, perfect peace, 
perfect work, perfect life. 

This all-pervading assurance of perfection, I say, is 
peculiarly Christian, for with the promise comes the 
demonstration and example of Jesus Christ, and from 


39 


The Greatest Fact of History 

Him radiates the glorious invitation, “Follow Me,” 
and “Where I am, there ye shall be also.” The con¬ 
firmation of one who did follow Him far and who is 
with Him now, is, “We shall be like Him.” 

Yes, Christianity, by the number, the measure, the 
quality and the demonstration of its promises is the 
greatest fact of history. Were you to call the witnesses, 
were it possible to gather them together and to take 
their testimony, you would fill the earth, and their 
voices would drown the sound of all the waters. 

Again, Christianity is the greatest fact of history 
because of what it has done, because of its accomplish¬ 
ments. Measure an institution by its contribution to 
human good. Judge every tree by its fruits. 

Christians have not always been prompt to apply this 
principle to others. Perhaps the hard school of the 
early church trained some to deal harshly and with a 
spirit of intolerance altogether foreign to their great 
teacher. Something at least of the homely philosophy 
found in the familiar verse, “There is so much of bad 
in the best of us and so much of good in the worst of 
us, that it does not behoove any of us to say anything 
about the rest of us,” should permeate our spirits. 

Vast contributions have been made to the happiness, 
health and knowledge of man by movements and insti¬ 
tutions other than those associated with Christianity. 
Indeed, it is when we contemplate and study these, 
properly evaluating them, that we find our most inspir¬ 
ing comparisons and our fairest perspective as Chris¬ 
tians. For Christianity has not only made its distinc¬ 
tive contributions but it has refined and perfected those 
of others. 

As to what the supreme contribution of Christianity 
to man has been, there may be a wide difference of 


40 


What Men Need Most 


opinion. To me there is no question that it is the 
sacredness of personality, the sense of the soul, the 
soul of the individual as priceless above rubies, as 
richer than riches. Jesus gave the right-about-face to 
human society when He said, “Ye are the temple of 
the Holy Ghost”; ye,—not the altar of the innermost 
sanctuary,—ye are the holy of holies. Then did he 
set a little child, babe of the humblest toiler, above the 
diadem of a kingdom. Then did he set in motion forces 
that make a thorn in the heel of a barefoot boy of 
greater concern to society than the spangled trappings 
of a prince, while the hours of toil for women and 
children are a more vital problem for governments than 
the protection of temporal wealth. 

And against everything that violates personality, 
every influence that degrades the human body, debases 
the human mind, pollutes the soul, Jesus has arrayed 
Christianity. With hospitals and schools, institutions 
of mercy and programmes of healing, He and His fol¬ 
lowers have set about the task of setting in order the 
world. 

Yes, this sense of the sacredness of life, the sacred¬ 
ness of personality, the sacredness of that which is the 
supreme expression of God’s creative instinct, power 
and love,—this into which He pours Himself, this 
which, as God Himself is deathless, can never die,— 
this is the supreme contribution of Christianity to man. 
And the mighty movements of reform that the Chris¬ 
tian Church has inspired and led, the missionary adven¬ 
tures of her most intrepid saints, the social programmes 
that take their life from the fountain which flows from 
His side who said, “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” the 
ever growing sentiment against war,—these are expres- 


41 


The Greatest Fact of History 

sions of the Christ-filled mind against that which in¬ 
jures and destroys personality. 

Slavery died because it debased personality,—the 
personality of the slave and of the slave-driver. Duel¬ 
ling was outlawed because it degraded personality. 
Prohibition could never have succeeded had it not been 
for the fact that beverage alcohol and the saloon raised 
the brute and destroyed personality. Organised vice 
everywhere faces the inevitable ban of civilisation be¬ 
cause it leaves a blotch of shame upon personality, and 
armed conflict will pass from the stage of human action 
because it is the destroyer, red-handed and colossal, of 
human personality; because by one fell stroke it ends 
the present and slays the future, leaves its victims 
twice upon the plains of battle, once in fair-eyed sons 
who had but just begun to live, and once in generations 
sealed forever in the dead loins of potential fatherhood 
destroyed. 

This is Christianity’s greatest contribution,—the 
exaltation of personality, the sense of its sacredness, 
“Thou art the temple of the Holy Ghost”; within thee 
God dwells, not in stone, nor in golden vessels, not in 
shrines nor yet in arks and temples, not in pride of 
station, nor in pomp of state. But within thee, a little 
child, a maiden fair, or stalwart youth,—a woman, a 
man, seamstress or maid, princess or queen, toiler or 
captain of trade,—within thee God dwells; thou art 
His holy place. 

Other religions and institutions have made contribu¬ 
tions to the happiness and knowledge of man, have 
enriched art and given to science, have measured their 
strength in numbers against the followers of the 
Galilean, and we do ourselves no credit when we ignore 


42 


What Men Need Most 

or despise their gifts. They have raised the walls of 
beautiful cities and stretched wide the boundaries of 
empires; they have taught man’s mind and strength¬ 
ened man’s body, filled his coffers and feasted his am¬ 
bitions,—aye, and they have fed his soul,—fed it with 
husks perhaps, but they have recognised the deathless 
longings of his immortal spirit and have sought to give 
back an answer to his cry, “Light, light, more light!” 

But when this has been said, and when all has been 
said, they have failed,—failed because they lacked that 
which Christianity alone had to give in its simplicity 
and fulness, the sense of the sacred in man, the divine 
in personality. 

Again, Christianity is the greatest fact of history 
because of its authority. Authority is not a popular 
word with the multitude just at present, but it is a very 
important word,—a word that home, business, church 
and state need to hear more often. Discipline and 
control, which are but expressions of authority, are not 
particularly popular, either. But until they are given 
more attention among us, our children will continue to 
be late on the streets and early into trouble; our courts 
will continue to be advertising agencies for shameless 
stories of broken vows; our business relationships will 
continue to wait too frequently at the door of the shrewd 
manipulator rather than in the office of the honest ad¬ 
viser, and our government will not cease to be a foot¬ 
ball for corrupt politicians. 

Christianity is the greatest fact of history because 
it is the religion of supreme authority; its government 
is above all governments, and we are told in the book 
of its law that it shall “never end.” Its rule is for 
time and for eternity. We are committed on this con¬ 
tinent, thank God, to a separation between church and 


43 


The Greatest Fact of History 

state, but, thank God again, that in the words of former 
Associate Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, “This is a Christian nation,” in God we 
put our trust, and must! 

But how idle seem these brave words when we con¬ 
template so many of our individual and national ac¬ 
tions. No wonder pessimists find comfort and infidels 
their “evidence.” Not until we have compared the 
records of the generations and assembled all the facts,, 
do we see the upward bend of civilisation, do we catch 
a vision of the state that is to be, and find faith to unite 
our voices in those stupendous words of God’s supreme 
declaration of authority, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself.” 

Our eyes turn upward to the King upon the throne 
of the eternities,—to the High Command of the soul, 
and with discernment, with a full regard for our place 
and responsibility in the great event of salvation,—sal¬ 
vation for the individual and for society,—we sing with 
Browning, “God’s in His Heaven; all’s right with the 
world.” 

But Christianity is the greatest fact of history be¬ 
cause of its method. The most amazing words ever 
spoken by a leader were these, “I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth, will draw all men unto me.” All other con¬ 
querors came with power and force, lashes in the hands 
of drivers herded the minions of Xerxes, a million 
strong, into the pass of Thermopylss; terror ran before 
the hordes of Attila and Genghis-Khan; lustful prom¬ 
ises and fanatical hate incited the hosts of Mohammed; 
fear in a thousand hideous forms has been the bulwark 
of every jungle worship. 

But Jesus Christ, who stands to-day, supreme, alone, 


44 


What Men Need Most 


in the hungry soul of the world, when He laid down 
before His lieutenants His final plan of campaign and 
gave them the directions that were to continue until the 
heavens roll back as a scroll, said, “I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” “Love, 
so amazing, so divine!” “Hot by might, nor by power, 
but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” And, in 
the last analysis, Christianity is great because it is a 
spirit, and because it captures, commands, controls, the 
spirits of men. 

What confirmation that promise that He would draw 
all men has had! They swung Him up between earth 
and sky; lifted Him upon the slave’s cross, between 
thieves, and with the first breath of His, “It is 
finished,” began the disintegration of the Roman Em¬ 
pire. They stoned Stephen, and one of that very com¬ 
pany of persecutors became the field marshal of His 
first advance toward earth’s last frontiers. They fed 
His followers to lions they had starved for the occa¬ 
sion, and presently the bloody sand became the seed- 
ground of His church. They burned His Book, only to 
find that they had but unchained His Word. 

At last, when persecution and martyrdom had failed, 
popularity came to more seriously threaten His plan. 
Men took on His name in easy fashion and hid their 
true selves behind loud professions. Wealth and dis¬ 
tinction turned the heads of His captains; they came to 
serve earthly monarchs with zeal that was greater than 
their passion for their Lord; the visible church became 
corrupt with temporal power. 

But though shaken to its foundations, His cause stood 
fast, and to-day, with perilous times behind and yet 
weightier events before, His spirit rises an irresistible 


45 


The Greatest Fact of History 

tide in human affairs, hearing man forward, drawing 
him upward and on. 

In all history there is no other spectacle like this,— 
a king without a capitol, a conqueror without an army, 
an empire without a sword. The fact is proof that 
love is the greatest thing in the world. Its only answer 
is God. 

And here we come to the conclusion of the whole 
matter, and the conclusion is the whole matter: Chris¬ 
tianity is the greatest fact of history because Chris¬ 
tianity is Jesus Christ. When we turn to Him, how 
futile are all words, for He is love; He is man; He 
is God. 


4 

THREE FACTS AND A QUESTION 

Text: Esther 4:14. “Who Icnoweth whether 
thou art come to the kingdom for such a time 
as this?” 

The message has its basis in the life of a queen, in 
the character of a woman,—Esther, the Jewess. His¬ 
tory presents her in the white light granted only those 
who serve and save; who battle mightily and minister 
largely. She symbolises three vast virtues,—loyalty, 
liberty, and faith. She was true to her people; she lib¬ 
erated her race; she believed implicitly in her God. 

In her time she turned wrath into praise and brought 
life out of death; for our time she is a brave example 
and lofty inspiration. 

These are the words of the message: “Who knoweth 
whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time 
as this?” In them there are three facts and a ques¬ 
tion. 

The first fact of the message is the fact of person¬ 
ality, “Thou art come.” That I am, staggers me. 
There are times when I search for the reasons behind 
my birth, when I would lay hold of the barriers that 
fence me from the field where my life-germ was planted. 
There are times when my mind rushes on to leap the 

chasm between me and the things that are hid with 

46 


Three Facts and a Question 47 

Christ in God. But I never cease to wonder at my 
being. Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow are three 
mysteries, and the greatest of these is to-day. 

I have watched my children in their cradles, in the 
first discovery of infancy, playing with their hands, and 
I am bound to confess that my own hands are quite as 
much a miracle to me now as they were back in the 
grey dawn before memory began, when I saw them first. 

But I am and “thou art/’ and though I cannot ex¬ 
plain, I should be a fool to deny. I am hands and 
feet; I am a body, but my body is not I. I am a spirit. 
There is a container and there is the thing contained. 
How superficial, how inconsistent, is the man who uses 
vocal organs he cannot understand, to deny the fact of 
a soul he cannot understand! He would better begin 
by denying the existence of his own voice. 

Ho you debate the question by insisting that eyes 
may see eyes and ears hear voices, and hands touch 
hands, but that no one can measure a soul? I have 
touched my cold dead; and, though the form of it was 
there, it had neither eyes nor ears, neither hands nor 
feet; it did not speak, and it did not smile. That which 
I had clasped was gone. 

“Thou art come.” Hot a thing of flesh and bone, 
but a being of brawn and brain; a living soul, an im¬ 
mortal. “Thou art come.” Sprung from the loins of 
all the past, and inheritor of the past’s taint and virtue, 
subject to disease and tempted, poor or rich, versatile 
or dull “thou art come.” 

There are dignity and terror in the personal pro¬ 
noun. Up from the dust into which have crumbled 
the moulds that fashioned the unnumbered billions of 
humans who preceded you; out of the matter God 
breathed upon after He had shaped the first Adam, 


48 


What Men Need Most 


and back into which your earthly house shall pass, 
“thou art come/ 7 

At the risk of inciting you to overvalue yourselves, 
to overestimate your qualities by misunderstanding the 
direction of the emphasis, I give you the supreme truth: 
Personality is eternal. 

The second fact of the message is the fact of place. 
“Thou art come to the kingdom.” And the kingdom 
is the kingdom of the present. You are in the world; 
just now it may not be easy to realise it, but your feet 
are on the earth, and all about you are people with 
faults and follies as well as with smiles and congratu¬ 
lations. There is before you the humdrum business of 
bread-making and child-rearing, of harvesting and ship¬ 
building, of preaching and teaching, of suffering and 
dying, of service and of sacrifice. You have missed 
the message of life unless you go out every morning 
of the working day to master practical affairs, to solve 
immediate problems, to meet the crisis of the moment, 
whether that crisis be a high circumstance such as 
Esther faced, or a small sum that wrinkles the brow 
of a child. We have not seen the beauties or caught 
the lessons of the radiant Jewess, whose soul was more 
exquisite than her form or face, until we have thrust 
her great ordeal into the life of our times, into the 
affairs of our generation. 

Do not misunderstand me. God pity us when we 
lose our dreams or when we cease to see visions. We 
must never become so engrossed with ministries that 
we have no patience or time for musing, for prayer, 
and for communion. Eventually he runs in a circle 
who runs without rest. A business bankrupts itself 
when it becomes a mere counting machine. There is 
an efficiency that is inefficient. We must cultivate the 


Three Facts and a Question 49 

amenities of the heart; we must wait with friendship 
and tarry with God, if we are to see developed within 
ourselves that spiritual initiative that, more than phys¬ 
ical force and mechanical genius, shapes the destiny of 
the world. 

But we must bring this spiritual initiative, we must 
apply this moral fervour, this divine optimism, to the 
tasks of the kingdom. We must harness our dreams; 
we must put a sword into the hands of our visions; we 
must honour our friendships by rendering a service, and 
glorify our God by making a life. 

The kingdom is your kingdom, yours to-day as it was 
Queen Esther’s yesterday. Again the dignity of per¬ 
sonality. Yours; for you is the opportunity, and will 
you sulk because of one who seems by birth or environ¬ 
ment to be more favoured than you are? Will you 
hang back because of handicaps, fancied or real, when 
a small-bodied and humbly-born Welshman may rise 
to stand at the head of all liberal statesmen, when a 
farmer boy may become a President, and when un¬ 
named private soldiers may make a human levee that 
holds back a flood of absolutism as the dikes of Hol¬ 
land hold back the North Sea? Will you despise your 
present ministry because of geographical limitations or 
because of its smallness when measured by the deeds 
of others? 

There is no excuse for failure, for God is the final 
arbiter, and He measures a life, not by its accomplish¬ 
ments, but by what it struggles to do; not by the work 
of its hands alone, but by the motives of its heart. 

The kingdom is your kingdom, for yours is the re¬ 
sponsibility. No life ever faces an opportunity to 
render a service without looking into the eyes of moral 
obligation. Standing at a crowded street-corner in New 


50 


What Men Need Most 


York City one day, I saw a blind man hesitating at the 
sidewalk’s edge. Suddenly a Boy Scout leaped “out of 
the somewhere into the here,” and in a moment the 
stranger was led in safety across Fifth Avenue. 

There are blind men everywhere. The world is going 
it blind to-day. Guides are needed, guides who have 
all the dash of the Boy Scout and as much informa¬ 
tion. You are bound, and so am I, in a small corner 
or in a larger place, and to the utmost of physical 
strength and moral stamina, to show the way. Any 
man or any woman who has as much as a handful of 
the flour of influence, or a thimbleful of the oil of 
ability, and hoards it in these starving times, is not a 
Christian, is not a patriot, is a poltroon. We must 
give, give unto the uttermost, give our all. 

The kingdom is your kingdom, for yours are the 
rewards, and the rewards are unfailing and ample. 
There is the joy of honest work, of a task well per¬ 
formed. There is no satisfaction greater than that 
which comes with the consciousness of having completed 
a project. There is no sleep sweeter than the slumber 
that follows level-best endeavour, whether your hands 
have swung an axe in the forest or your mind has 
chiselled an angel out of marble. 

There is the growth of soul that attends all service, 
the breaking of the bands of prejudice, the laying down 
of the barriers of narrowness, the developing of a re¬ 
sourceful and beneficent character. I would rather 
have it said of you, when they put away the tools with 
which you have gardened in the rich fields of human 
progress, that you were a great heart than that you 
garnered a golden harvest. 

You have stern problems and hard work before you, 
but you will not become hard if the prayer with which 


Three Facts and a Question 51 

you greet each new day has the spirit of the words, 
“Father of us all, help me this day to love men and 
women, little children and Thee.” 

During the great war I heard a brilliant young 
Canadian lieutenant-colonel say, in a farewell address 
delivered at a banquet given in his honour by the church 
of which he was a member, “I do not go into this bloody 
thing because I want to go; because I have a passion 
to slay. I go because duty calls me, and I am glad to 
do my bit. As I try to analyse the conflicting emotions 
of my heart, I find terror as well as determination. 
But one great desire I do have, to so carry myself at 
the front and everywhere that when I come back, if I 
come back, little children will run to me as confidently 
as they do to-day.” 

The kingdom is yours, because the rewards are yours, 
and the highest reward of all is the “Well done” of 
heaven. I do not hesitate to tell you that I am work¬ 
ing for that. I may miss a certain peace of mind that 
comes when men speak well of me; but I must not miss 
His approbation, and I need not. There is no chance 
for Him to misunderstand me. The judgments of the 
world are superficial and finite; the judgments of God 
are infinite; they are “true and righteous altogether.” 

This leads us naturally to the fact that the kingdom 
which is our kingdom is also God’s kingdom. 

“God’s in His heaven; 

All’s right with the world.” 

Does the quotation seem out of place? Does it jar? 
If it is not true, then where is our hope? At a great 
convention an international leader of religious thought 
and activity declared that while in Europe during the 
war he heard an English diplomat say that a complete 


52 


What Men Need Most 


world catastrophe could not be averted “unless God 
performs a miracle.” And God did and God will! 
He is performing miracles; miraculous beyond the 
turning of water into wine was the driving from Ameri¬ 
can civilisation of beverage alcohol; miraculous beyond 
the raising of Lazarus is the new birth of democracy 
in all the world. 

I do not profess to see a way through the present 
darkness but I do know that there is a way, and that 
our halting feet will find and tread it. I am not a 
prophet; I cannot see the end from the beginning. But 
I have the sure knowledge of the omnipotence of God, 
an omnipotence that maketh even the wrath of men to 
praise Him. 

Christianity has not failed, for it has been neither un¬ 
derstood nor applied. Men called Christians have mis¬ 
erably failed, but Jesus has the only balm for the war- 
sores of the world. The race is on a pilgrimage of dis¬ 
covery; it is the quest of Christ. We have taken the 
wilderness way of hunger and thirst; of delay and 
denial; but to-day our backs are against Egypt, and 
we are moving towards Jordan. 

If it were not for the assurance and for the pro¬ 
gramme of the Christian religion, I should utterly 
despair. But for our terrible sins we are now aton¬ 
ing. Eor our iniquitous neglect of the clear teachings 
of Him who spake as never man spake, for our failure 
to apply those teachings to governments as well as to 
individuals, for the money that we have “sluiced out 
of rivers of blood” we are paying the price. 

It is a price vast beyond human comprehension, but 
who will say that it is too great a price to pay if by it 
we gain an international conscience; if by it we democ¬ 
ratise the last threatening autocratic government; if by 


Three Facts and a Question 53 

it all states come to accept brotherhood responsibilities, 
each for the other and the strong for the weak; if by 
it we learn the truth written in letters of fire and 
blood above every mined sea and every shell-ploughed 
field, “Without me ye can do nothing.” 

Yes, “thou art come to the kingdom,” thy kingdom 
and God’s. Come to be a toiler with the infinite in 
promoting the common good and in making a new 
earth. 

The third fact of the message is the fact of time. 
“For such a time as this.” Already we have appre¬ 
ciated together the stupendous problems to which we 
are born, problems far more complex and appalling than 
those confronting the queen whose character is our real 
message to-day, but problems no less solvable, for they 
are human problems, and we are labourers together 
with God. 

But first of all, we must go to our knees. First of 
all, our preparedness for these great tasks must be 
spiritual. America must be made increasingly worth 
living for, as well as increasingly worth dying for. 
And why is a nation worth dying for ? Not because 
of her forests and rivers, not because of her ranges 
crowded with ore, not because of her ripening harvests 
and her orchards in full bloom; not because of her busy 
marts of trade. A nation is worth dying for because 
of her ideals, because of her spiritual institutions, be¬ 
cause she has a soul to save. The challenge of our 
patriotism to-day, for such a time as this, is the call 
to a supreme self-surrender for God, for America, and 
for the world. 

If this were the place for an extended survey, we 
should be bound to discuss at length the grave economic 
and social crises that have followed the war. Half the 



54 


What Men Need Most 


world is hungry to-day, and millions are said to be 
slowly starving. 

While the great war, with the lesser wars following 
it, is responsible for much of this physical suffering, 
other and more fundamental causes of waste and in¬ 
equality have been revealed. Until these causes are 
squarely faced and honestly dealt with, no superficial 
juggling with effects can give lasting relief. Sixty per 
cent of our families are living on incomes of less than 
$800 annually, when unprejudiced investigators prove 
that no family can supply itself with essential neces¬ 
sities and comforts and provide properly for its future 
on less than $1,200 annually. 

Apples rot on the trees of Ohio and berries decay on 
the bushes of Oregon while children lift up the cry of 
hunger in the streets of New York. Drunken feasts of 
the parasite rich and bread riots of the helpless poor 
join their voices to the disgrace of our modern city life. 
In the mountains of Pennsylvania coal waits while 
grates are empty in New England and the Middle 
West. 

“God give us men. A time like this demands 
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready 
hands.” 

And God is giving men, men and women, unselfish, 
prophetic, and competent for the leadership and service 
of this time. Great Britain is wrestling constructively 
with the liquor octopus of recognised vested rights. 
America has achieved national prohibition. The slogan, 
“A Saloonless Nation by 1920,” has become the proc¬ 
lamation for a saloonless world. God is giving com¬ 
pensation for our appalling tragedies. The millions 


Three Facts and a Question 55 

that were under arms have eaten of the tree of knowl¬ 
edge. They have learned their human values and their 
divine rights. The poor are claiming their birthright 
of the earth and its fruits; and increasingly the rich 
are coming to accept their obligations as stewards. In 
spite of grave moral reactions we believe that upon the 
common altar of sacrifice raised by the war, where the 
high and low joined their offerings of blood and 
treasure, has been kindled a fire that will burn out the 
dross of economic slavery, and that will light the way 
to the wiser times of equal opportunity in the benefits 
of democratic government and in the gifts of nature’s 
God. 

“For such a time as this,” ghastly, glorious time! 
There are armies of graves across two hemispheres, and 
the world is still a charnel-pit. The ruined cities of 
northern France still bear the marks of never-to-be- 
forgotten vandalism and the spots of blood that will 
not out. 

But as truly as the blood of the martyrs is the seed 
of the church, so there is a resurrection for every tomb, 
and a daybreak for every midnight. The path of civili¬ 
sation rises and dips, but it remains permanently at no 
lower level. The key-word of the whole social order is 
progress, not decline. To-morrow will be better than 
to-day, and we are the builders of the to-morrow. 

These are the facts of the mesage: The fact of per¬ 
sonality, the fact of place, and the fact of time. The 
question of the message, the question upon the correct 
answer to which your whole life waits, is “Who know- 
eth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a 
time as this?” Who has the answer to the question? 
Who knows? 

There are always a number of people who think that 


56 


What Men Need Most 


they know,—our friends and our parents, for instance. 
They may or they may not have the correct judgment 
of our possibilities. But in other generations class dull¬ 
ards have taken life’s prizes, and university honour 
men have become prodigal sons of learning. Our im¬ 
mediate associates are too close to us to see on all sides 
of us. Distance gives perspective. 

Who knows? Mentally and spiritually lazy people, 
when confronted with such a problem, are likely to say, 
“God knows.” But shall we satisfy ourselves with 
“God knows whether I am come to the kingdom for 
such a time as this” ? Men and women, handling every 
day the service tools of life, in reverence let me say 
that unless you know, the fact of God’s omniscience 
does not matter. Unless you have the conviction that 
for such a time as this you are born, trained, and 
equipped, the wisdom of the Almighty, in so far as it 
relates to you, a free moral agent, is a palsied arm. 

Some one has said, “Egotism is divine.” Egotism 
may be very foolish, and the word has come to signify 
obnoxious self-esteem. But no brilliancy, no physical 
prowess, no mechanical efficiency, no refinement of 
birth, no indorsement of influential friends, no mere 
mental equipment, can build for you the life trium¬ 
phant, unless these are united in you, to your own abso¬ 
lute knowledge, that you have a place to fill in the 
world, that you have a ministry to perform in your 
generation, that you are sent of God, that you are come 
to the kingdom for such a time as this. 

Here is the knowledge that is power. Such knowl¬ 
edge is very exalting and very humbling, and those who 
possess it are the humblers of the mighty. “Know 
thyself” is the first principle of true wisdom and the 
secret of success. 


Three Facts and a Question 57 

'None of us should ever cease to be a learner. But 
our wisdom-gathering must he more than academic. 
It must be applied. What we already have we must 
use while each new discovery must be channelled in 
service; and of wisdom’s quest there is no end. 

Finally, we must know God, and God’s Son, the 
only sufficient Saviour and Shepherd. We must know 
Him whom to know aright is eternal life, eternal life 
for ourselves and for our labours. 

I have no apology to make for the last emphasis of 
the message. In a rocking world, with civilisation peel¬ 
ing her thin veneer, the only mighty fortress is our 
God. And here faith and knowledge blend. Only the 
truly wise believe, and only those who from the crum¬ 
bling foundations man has laid, spring to the Rock of 
Ages, have wisdom enough to lead us now. 

“I know of a world that is sunk in shame, 

Where hearts oft faint and tire. 

But I know of a name, a name, a name 
That can set that world on tire. 

Its sound is a brand, its letters flame, 

I know of a name, a name, a name, 

’Tis Jesus.” 

Faith, faith in ultimate good because of an unlimited 
God, is the victory that overcomes the world. Let us 
anchor our lives here. 


5 

DEAD KING OR LIVING LORD? 


Text: St. Luke 24: 5-6. “Why seek ye the 
living among the dead? He is not here, but 
is risen.” 

The supreme question of Easter morning is not, “Did 
Jesus Rise?” hut “Is Jesus Risen?” Here joins life’s 
greatest issue. Immortal hope trembles in the balance 
for us all, as we turn our eyes toward the tomb in 
Joseph’s garden where Mary hurried through the dews 
of that first Easter dawn, and as we hear again the 
angels’ stupendous declaration, “Why seek ye the living 
among the dead ? He is not here, but is risen.” 

What does Easter mean to us ? As we look upon 
that great event and lose the sense of time and space, 
what does our angel spokesman say ? What is the mes¬ 
sage of the voice,—“He rose,” or “He is risen” ? He 
was, or, He is? The tense is everything. Our peace 
of mind, our happiness, our moral health, depends upon 
our answer to the question. 

There are those who give at least mental assent to 

the miracle which opened the tomb, but who by their 

practice deny louder than any words the living Christ. 

They move with those who, as the day went dark upon 

the skull-shaped hill, named Him a dead king; they 

are of the mixed multitude which turned away from 

his agony, whatever else their judgment may have 

58 


i 


Dead King or Living Lord? 59 

been, however well they may have loved, or hated Him, 
without a promise for their grief or a premonition for 
their exultation. 

The challenge of the ultimatum, then, is “Dead 
King or Living Lord V y When Pilate wrote the super¬ 
scription for the cross, “King of the Jews,” he was not 
uncertain of the crucifixion’s outcome. He made let¬ 
ters to brand a dead man and not to honour a living 
ruler. Vascillating, pusillanimous, cowardly and jeal¬ 
ous, he would have them acknowledge no personality 
longer able to dispute with him for public attention and 
homage. Hor would he have taken the chance of of¬ 
fending the greater Caesar by acclaiming the wonder¬ 
working Jew, had he not already, though to be sure 
with a certain fearful reluctance, made the destruction 
of the Hazarine a certainty. Hot until the way was 
cleared to Calvary, not until his own first and entirely 
selfish objections had been overruled, and God’s dear 
Son was on His Via Crucis, did the nervous Pilate take 
his stencil in hand. To the Praetor of Pome Jesus was 
a broken body, a powerless will, a dead king. 

And to the church whose priests mixed their hate 
with spittle to drown His forgiving glances, the church 
decadent and infidel, straining gnats and swallowing 
camels, praying at length in public, and in secret short¬ 
changing the people;—the church, a tomb of putrid 
sacrileges, Jesus was a charlatan exposed at last, a le- 
pudiated prophet, a popular idol overthrown, a dead 
king. That His had been a name to conjure with, their 
very presence at the cross confirmed; their shameful 
demonstrations proved; but to them His day was ended; 
His glory was departed i —He was dead. 

There were strangers in that mount of suffering, 
merchants from the far corners of the earth, cuiiosity- 


60 


What Men Need Most 


seekers who came for the spectacle, and who, encour¬ 
aged by the rumours of this man’s miraculous gifts, 
hoped for a new thrill. Thousands watched that day 
upon the green hill without the city gate, the painful 
ascent of the cross, as other thousands watched the 
“Human Fly” go to his death up the sheer walls of the 
Martinique in Yew York City. How these rude fel¬ 
lows must have waited, breathless, for His answer when 
his temple tormentors cried out in derision, “Come 
down from the cross,” and when they had shaken them¬ 
selves free of the momentary terror the darkened 
heavens and other strange manifestations must have 
inspired; I suppose they sought their lodgings thought¬ 
ful, but disappointed, and saying, “Well, whatever he 
was, he is dead now. Strangely we felt ourselves drawn 
to Him; Ah! we were sure that He would come down, 
and even now we somehow believe that He could have 
come down, but he is a dead king.” 

And what of the little group which gazed through 
weeping eyes upon that spectacle,—the faithful John, 
to whom the royal son bequeathed his mother, and those 
others who had taken bread from his now pierced 
hands. And what of her who bore him? woman of 
infinite woes. Surely these knew! Surely these un¬ 
derstood! Yo! Their judgment, different in quality, 
was not different in character. They saw a beloved 
form stiffen; eyes that had so often looked upon them 
with vast yearning, glaze; hands that had so often car¬ 
ried to the suffering multitudes the touch of healing, 
become lifeless; the voice that had spoken as never man 
spake, grow dumb, and as they watched and wept, hope 
saw no star, for hope was dead, and listening love heard 
not even “the rustle of a wing.” “For as yet,” as you 
will find it written in the 9th verse of the twentieth 


61 


Dead King or Living Lord? 

chapter of St. John’s Gospel, “they knew not the scrip¬ 
ture, that he must rise again from the dead.” And 
beyond that first Easter morning their great doubt 
stalked, until Thomas had thrust his fingers into the 
yet open wounds. Then faith found tongue. After¬ 
wards, came the vindication of history, and the fulfil¬ 
ment of time. 

He was not a dead king who commanded the intrepid 
saints of the early church, who led them out on the 
most sublime adventures of human experience. He 
was not a dead king who lit the signal fires of the Pen¬ 
tecostal upper room; who held the gaze of Stephen, 
when through the showering stones that first Christian 
martyr lifted his dying eyes to the opening heavens 
and claimed forgiveness for his murderers. He was 
not a dead king who took command of Saul of Tarsus, 
blinded him with lightnings and then thrust him forth 
to compass the earth with the truths of redemption. 
He was not a dead king who conquered Rome more 
completely than did Hannibal or Attila; who made out 
of a heathen Coliseum a Christian church, and who 
set up a spiritual empire by the Golden Horn more 
extensive and potent than the temporal throne of Con¬ 
stantine. He was not a dead king who went before the 
cross of Augustine, who tamed the fires for Savonarola, 
who led the Ironsides of Cromwell, who calmed the 
seas that broke about the prow of the Half-moon and 
eased the waves that washed the decks of the May¬ 
flower. He was not a dead king who opened up the 
wilderness before the circuit rider and gave to the first 
missionaries the islands of the sea for an inheritance. 

John Calvin and John Wesley, Zinzendorf and 
Luther, Carey and Paton and Morison, Livingstone, 
Adoniram Judson, Bishop Thoburn and MacKay, Sam 



62 


What Men Need Most 


Lapsley and Horace Pitkin, and that numberless com¬ 
pany of their faith and kind who accepted the great 
commission and went forth to make the waste places 
of superstition and idolatry blossom with the flowers 
of salvation, followed not the banner of a dead king but 
marched in the train of a living Lord. 

A supreme evidence of the fact that Jesus broke out 
of His tomb, rose from the dead and conquered death, 
is this other fact, scarcely less sublime, that men and 
women live and die for Him and for His cause, and 
that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
church.” 

The institutions of modern civilisation that are our 
greatest pride are not monuments of a dead king; they 
are memorials to a living Lord. And the finest im¬ 
pulse of the human heart, the free and unselfish aspira¬ 
tions of the human mind, the holiest ambitions of the 
immortal soul, these two thousand years since Pilate 
wrote that taunt for Israel and had it nailed above the 
Galilean’s thorn-crowned head, have sprung from the 
deathless fountain opened under the cross for the heal¬ 
ing of the nations. 

Pilate was wrong; the priests were wrong; the curi¬ 
ous onlookers, the disappointed spectators were wrong; 
the disciples and Mary were wrong. He was not dead 
when on the cross His body died,—He was the living 
Lord. 

And now we have cleared the way to the more vital 
matter. He rose. Is He risen ? What is the answer ? 

It is not difficult to be an infidel. A very ordinary 
mind can doubt, and doubt impressively. To this fact 
I am a competent witness. Any poor fellow can deny. 
And beyond this, the times in which we live are fruitful 
gardens for rank growths of cynicism and discourage- 


63 


Dead King or Living Lord? 

ment. It takes a far vision to catch the promise of a 
dawn beyond the moral, the social, the industrial, the 
international night in which we seem to live. 

Nor would I have you think that I refer only to a 
state of mind when I speak of doubt and denial. The 
most dangerous infidel is not the one who with his lips 
denies; it is possible for me to sit in church on Easter 
Sunday, before the resurrection lilies, joining with 
affirmation in the creed, and uniting in the hymns of 
faith, giving mental assent to all the most evangelical 
of preachers might say, and yet with my life acknowl¬ 
edging not a living Lord, but confirming with Pilate 
and the priests and the rest, a dead king. 

What is my confession on Easter day? Yes, and 
also what is my confession the following day? What 
is my life? Do I practise Jesus Christ? And how 
far have His principles which we declare to be true 
and righteous altogether possessed the mind and prac¬ 
tice of human relationships? Does a dead king lie 
beneath the Ruhr valley to-day, or shall a living Lord 
of reconciliation patrol the boundaries of Europe ? 
Will the leaders of capital and labour worship at the 
tomb of a dead king or listen to the voice of a living 
Lord? Statesmen and captains of industry, employers 
and employes, those who sell and those who buy, rich 
and poor, you and I, must face the great question,— 
must meet the ultimatum. As individuals and as social 
units we must meet it, and we must make reply not 
only with our lips; we must answer with our lives. 

Have I confessed a situation that has encouragement 
for the pessimist? Well, I might go even farther, and 
confess a sense of at times appalling discouragement, 
a mood that cries, The Days are evil; the good is dead; 
the end is worse than the beginning; what’s the use? 


64 


What Men Need Most 

But then I hear a voice that never fails the ears that 
strain to hear the bugle of the dawn, “Say not, the 
days are evil, who’s to blame. Stand up, speak out and 
bravely, in God’s name. Be strong.” 

Against the present chaos in internationalism sounds 
the Christmas chorus of Bethlehem, and in the awak¬ 
ening, sacrificial conscience, opposed to the futility and 
wastage of war, I see a star of hope that will shine 
more and more unto the perfect day of brotherhood. 
Against the greed of profiteers and the cruelty of the 
exploiters of weakness, who are satisfied to fill their 
coffers at the expense of empty bins and scanty larders, 
appear the ever-increasing number of men and women 
who measure their profits by the Golden Buie, and who 
share their power. 

“Say not the days are evil,” nor advertise the mote 
of infidelity in others, unless and until you have taken 
the beam of selfishness or idleness or injustice or 
idolatry out of your own eye; unless and until you 
have joined yourself to that goodly and growing com¬ 
pany that challenges the evil and battles the wrong. 

I know a man whose name a little while ago was 
on the lips of millions. He is drilling an oil well. He 
is the kind of an adventurer men call by another name, 
“wildcatter.” He of course is sure that he will find 
flowing gold. Perhaps he will. At any rate, he will 
deserve to; he has sold no stock and has interested no 
one with him who cannot afford to share disappoint¬ 
ment as well as success. And where, always before, I 
believe, the rule of w T ork in oil fields has been the seven 
day week and the twelve hour day,—the latter being 
two shifts, he has introduced another policy,—six days 
a week, but with pay for seven, and eight hours a day, 
with the added expense of three shifts instead of two, 


65 


Dead King or Living Lord? 

for twenty-four hours. Seasoned oil men call him a 
fool; he knows it, and smiles. I call him a pioneer 
and a Christian. I think of him when I read my 
Easter lesson, and thinking of him it is not hard to 
say, “He is risen. 7 ’ 

Hot long ago I sat in an old trading post, built from 
adobe and hewn logs. It stands a hundred miles from 
the nearest railroad, at Chin Lee, near the mouth 
of Canyon de Chelly, and six miles below the famous 
white house of a thousand rooms—that prehistoric 
cliff-dwelling which housed an industrious people be¬ 
fore the foundations of the pyramids were laid down. 
How the old post is a mission church, and in it several 
times every week gather the Christian Havajos. I 
talked to my dark-skinned, desert brothers as I would 
talk to you. 

I wish that you might know them as I have come 
to know them;—their children, their herds, their 
hogans. I wish that you might see the changes wrought 
by the spirit of the living Christ that I have witnessed; 
that you, too, might compare the pagan who still exists 
in filth and fear, with his neighbour whom God hath 
healed and who lives now with a countenance of light 
in a home which fully vindicates the theory that clean¬ 
liness is next to Godliness. 

I talked with William Gorman, one of the most 
prosperous and intelligent of the Havajos. He is a 
fine and handsome man. His wife, his sons and daugh¬ 
ters are worthy of him. I met him first when, seeing 
our automobile in distress, he hurried across his fields 
and helped dig us out of the sand. He has visited the 
great cities and has been the spokesman of his people 
in Washington. 

We talked of many things,—this dark-skinned Pres- 


66 


What Men Need Most 


byterian elder of a struggling Indian church set in the 
mighty desert stillness. We talked of the new adobe 
house of prayer with the manse the heroic missionary 
and his little band have slowly raised by their own 
hands; of the bell they some day hope to have to peal 
its golden message down the arroyas and across the 
mesas. William Gorman (his Havajo name you would 
not understand) loves those tiny buildings with a 
peculiar affection, for he it was who pled with Secre¬ 
tary Lane of President Wilson’s cabinet for the privi¬ 
lege of erecting them,—pled eloquently and success¬ 
fully against bitter opposition. 

And then, at last, through the interpreter (for Wil¬ 
liam Gorman speaks no English) I asked a question 
that brought a flood of words. With glowing eyes, rich 
and rapid voice and gesticulating hands, he spoke of 
his personal Christian experience; of his old fears and 
evil doings, of how as a lad he prayed to the river, the 
mountain, the bear, the coyote, the lion, and the sun; 
of how he had once lived as his neighbours lived, and 
then of the great change that came. When he told of 
his Christian faith he became so impressive that we 
who sat in that rude room caught the sense of an un¬ 
seen, benign presence, as he concluded, “And all of this 
I do fully believe.” 

Sir, if you have somewhere, somehow, lost your 
faith, come with me to the great open places, to the 
vast silences where God still speaks as from the burn¬ 
ing bush. I remember my Hava jo friends and their 
church as I read again the Easter message. Hot a dead 
king but a living Lord has changed and now commands 
William Gorman and his house. 

For me this is the message of Easter, and while it 
underlies and undergirds the entire structure of Chris- 


67 


Dead King or Living Lord? 

tian faith, while it is the most profound theological 
element of our religion, it has a warmth in its personal 
application, an intimate tenderness that makes it a 
halm of Gilead to a wounded spirit, and a song in the 
night to a sorrowing soul. When we stand beside the 
graves of our departed, while winter winds of death 
blow chill about us, we have the promise of another 
springtime, for He is risen. 

We know that, as the blossoms bud and bloom and 
fade; then lift their heads again in fairer forms, so we 
shall rise. Then, when at last we close our eyes upon 
these scenes and fold our hands from work, we do not 
die; that we but pass from work to greater work. Be¬ 
cause He lives, we shall live also. 

Jesus Christ is not a dead king. In spite of time 
and change, with all the ardour of my youth, those 
years when faith first came to build an altar in my 
heart, I answer all my doubts and silence all my fears 
with “He is Risen.” 


6 


REMEMBER JESUS CHRIST 

Text: II Timothy 2 : 8 . “Remember Jesus 
Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of 
David, according to my gospel 

Love is memory’s great compulsion, and next to love 
is remorse. We cannot forget when we love, and until 
love lias covered them we always remember our sins. 

Does the text arrangement then seem arbitrary and 
unwarranted? “Remember Jesus Christ?” Is it not 
altogether unnecessary to say, Remember Jesus; to 
admonish against forgetting the Christ ? Do you smile 
at the very thought of the world, of any of us, ever 
forgetting Him ? 

Is it not like warning a son not to forget his mother; 
to remember the hands that held him close against the 
warm breasts of his babyhood; the eyes that lingered 
upon his first efforts to break the shackles of his in¬ 
fancy’s helplessness; the voice that sang him to sleep; 
that called him from his play; that comforted his grief 
and admonished his wrong-doings:—the one above all 
others who believed in him; hoped for him, communed 
with him ? How unnecessary to say to you, “Remem¬ 
ber Mother.” 

Is it not like admonishing a man to keep in mind the 

mother of his children; the woman who shares his bitter 

and his sweet, who feels more deeply than he does his 

68 


Remember Jems Christ 


69 


reverses, and wlio is the genius of his triumphs? Is 
it not like saying, Husband, remember your wife; or, 
Son, remember your father; or, Woman, remember 
your dearest, your truest, most unselfish friend? As 
I think in these terms of the text I catch myself re¬ 
peating fragments of the old song, “How can I forget 
Him? How can I forget Him? He’s done so much 
for me.” 

Hor can I. Hot until I forget the holiest recollect 
tions of childhood, youth and young manhood, can I 
ever forget Jesus Christ. It is a mental impossibility 
for me to blot out the memory of him. Hot even were 
I to will to forget, could I; for again and again I have 
been reminded that memory is not subject to will. 

Hor can the world forget Him. He stands at every 
cross-road of her progress. He is at the centre of 
every great spiritual impulse that thrusts civilisation 
upward; cathedrals that have stood a thousand years 
crumble in an hour under the concentrated fire of long¬ 
distance guns. But the One who raised them by the 
hands of men His sacrifice inspired, stands unscarred, 
unshrunken, and unobscured. He has enemies, but 
none who match His strength. Many deny His au¬ 
thority, but even they must walk in the light He car¬ 
ries; and His rivals are as children who puff up their 
cheeks to blow out the sun. 

Why then the text ?—because in this case it serves to 
concentrate our gaze upon the central figure of the 
great truth we wish to emphasise. Remember Jesus 
Christ, and in particular remember these things about 
Him:—these characteristics that belong to Him; “Re¬ 
member Jesus Christ of the seed of David; raised from 
the dead.” 

First, remember that Jesus Christ was a man. Re- 


70 


What Men Need Most 


member that Jesus Christ was a human being; that He 
was flesh, bone, blood; mind to think and grieve and 
rejoice; body to grow and suffer; that He was like as 
we are. Eemember this to-day. Is it unnecessary to 
say as much as has already been said? Frankly, I 
often have greater difficulty with the humanity of Jesus 
than with the divinity of Jesus. This is especially 
true during the weeks of His growing passion. “Love 
so amazing, so divine. Can it be ?’’ and can it be that 
a man, a human being, possessed it? Small wonder 
that the first heretics in the church were not those who 
denied that Jesus was God, but those who refused to 
believe that He was or could have been human. It 
was the Gnostic that the early church first drove out; 
those who met the embarrassment of His visible pres¬ 
ence by the shores of Galilee and in the earthly counsels 
of men by saying that He only seemed to have a human 
form, that His apparent flesh and blood were only a 
phantom, that His suffering and His death were not 
reality. Apollonaris was not an infidel in the sense 
that we now regard the word; nor was he a Unitarian. 
The deity of Jesus Christ He did not question, but His 
humanity he did absolutely deny. Our text to-day is 
not a covered word; in it is no hidden meaning. Ee¬ 
member J esus Christ of David’s seed; descendant of a 
long earthly line, fruit of a woman’s womb, babe of a 
woman’s travail pain. Eemember Jesus Christ, the 
man, and of all men the most human. 

And so remembering him, remember that He had 
man’s limitations. We know by the record that He 
could be hungry, hungry for friends, as well as for 
food; hungry for fellowship and understanding, as well 
as for drink; that because He had the limitations of a 
man He could not, physically speaking, be in two 


Remember Jesus Christ 71 

places at the same time. Lazarus died in His absence. 
Hemember that because He was a man he could not go 
on without weariness; that because He was a man, a 
flesh-and-blood creature, He could not escape tempta¬ 
tion; tempted in all points like as we are, was Jesus. 

We know that because He came as a normal babe, 
so He grew as a normal child; as the Scripture has it,, 
“He increased/ 7 increased in stature, increased in in¬ 
tellect. He was wiser at twelve than He was at two, 
and wiser at thirty than He had been when He con¬ 
founded the temple priests. Do we seem to commit 
ourselves at this point to a moot question ? Do we raise 
the issue as to what Jesus would have been had He 
lived a decade longer than He did;—that is, would he 
have been wiser at forty than He was at thirty ? Well, 
moot questions of this sort do not trouble me, and I 
have small patience with those who spend their time 
in communion with them. 

I know that Jesus completed a perfect work at thirty- 
three, and am satisfied that there He reached His phys¬ 
ical, his human perfection. The essential matter is 
that He increased while He lived; that He grew in all 
of His human attributes; that He was not handed down 
from heaven in all of his final perfections. Yes, re¬ 
member, remember, all of you, that Jesus was of Da¬ 
vid’s seed; that like as we came, He came; that by the 
upward way of our youth, struggle, temptation and 
development, He climbed; and, climbing, reached the 
heights of manhood’s perfection. And that now from 
these heights He calls down to us, calls with invitation 
and a promise, “Follow me.” 

But this text has two parts, it is in halves. Bemem- 
ber Jesus Christ, of David’s line; do not forget His 
manhood; and, also remember Jesus Christ who was 


72 


What Men Need Most 


raised from the dead, who broke from Joseph’s tomb as 
a giant breaks from a shackle of straw. If Easter is not 
a lie, then Jesns is more than a man, more than any 
man. 

Remember Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with em¬ 
phasis upon the definite article; remember that He so 
confessed Himself when He confirmed Pilate’s inquiry 
with “Thou hast said,” and when He even more 
specifically declared, “He that hath seen me, hath seen 
the Father; the Father and I are one.” And were I 
to deny the claim of Jesus Christ at this point, I often 
wonder how I could believe in God at all, at least in 
a God of fatherly consideration and love. God, who 
created the world and all worlds; God, who set up the 
universe and the universes; who organised the preces¬ 
sion of the equinoxes, who made life out of His pur¬ 
pose and then at last allowed a situation in which 
nature destroys her own children, a situation in which 
cold becomes cruelty and heat a blistering torture, and 
in which man follows his divinely ordained passions 
into selfishness and lust. It is easier for me to believe 
in Jesus Christ as God than it would be to believe in 
God the Father without Jesus Christ. 

And of course it was to meet this very difficulty, this 
very situation in man, that God sent His only begotten 
Son; Jesus came to reveal the Father; to make Him 
clear; to bring Him nigh; to prove Him as love ,— 1 
love unto sacrifice, love unto death, and vastly more, 
love unto everlasting life. You may say, sir, it is 
hard; it is impossible to understand His nature, both 
human and divine; or you may go as far as some who 
it seems to me should know better, and say, He cannot 
be both God and man. And I will grant you that in 
terms of human reason, as to all the details, it is hard 


Remember Jesus Christ 73 

if not quite impossible to understand; that truly now 
we see through a glass darkly. 

But I am bound to say that with all the facts before 
me, I cannot believe anything else. I am forced to 
faith; His humanity is a historical fact; Jesus Christ 
was as Caesar was; as Napoleon was; as Lincoln was; 
and His divinity, His deity, with me are unescapable 
conclusions if He ever lived at all. For he lived as 
never man lived; He spoke as never man spoke; He 
healed as never man healed; He died as never man 
died; He rose as never man rose; He lives now as never 
man has lived. 

The great truth of the incarnation, the fact that God 
came into human life, as He was in Jesus Christ, is 
easier for me now than the doubt of that fact, and do 
not, oh, do not go out misled into believing that my way 
in faith has been one of easy grades. Out of my own 
experience I am trying to translate for you what this 
text has come to mean to me. Has come to mean, I 
say, for unto this day I have struggled against all the 
odds that you have faced; I have wrestled with all the 
questions in your minds; I have fought for every con¬ 
viction and assurance, which I now possess. 

But we are to remember something more to-day than 
the great, the central truths that Jesus Christ was man, 
and that at the same time Jesus Christ was God. We 
are to remember that we are to be like Him. That we 
are to be perfect as He is perfect, is the supreme decla¬ 
ration of this profound principle. We know of course 
that this is our ultimate goal which now is hid with 
Christ in God. But that it has very direct implications 
for this present life we must not overlook. At this 
point some find the basis for a great error; they say 
“He was God’s son but so are we, and as He was God’s 


74 


What Men Need Most 


son so we are; or may become. Just as, in a sense 
(they go on) God became incarnate in Jesus, so He will 
become life within us. It is only a matter of degree. 
He is our example, our invitation, our inspiration; He 
is a good man, incomparably better, perhaps than any 
other who has ever lived; but certainly He is not God. 
Let us emulate Him.” 

With these scholars I must and do part company. 
We are sons of God; we are heirs with Jesus Christ, 
and joint heirs, but we are not sons as Jesus was the 
Son. If he were merely a perfect man, to ask any 
person to be like Him would be piffle; it would be like 
ordering a cripple to become like Sandow, or a dis¬ 
figured imbecile like a queen of beauty, or a deaf and 
dumb man to become a Caruso. It is God in Christ 
who makes the invitation for us to become like Jesus, 
to become like Jesus more and more unto the perfect 
day, a reasonable request; a glorious invitation, and a 
divine assurance. Christ in us is our hope of glory; 
not the Christ who was a man, man of our manhood 
and limitations, but the Christ of God. 

To-day as you look back upon your failures, as you 
remember your transgressions, remember Jesus Christ. 
Remember that you may correct your ways; find for¬ 
giveness for your sins; that from the dead things of 
yesterday you may have a glorious resurrection. Why ? 
Because and only because “He is thy life,” because and 
only because in Him even though we have been for a 
long time dead in trespasses and sins, we become alive 
forever more. Men and women, let the call of every 
Communion service be a call to the great confession; 
your confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and King. 

But there is another word that must not be over¬ 
looked. What does it mean to fail of remembering 


Remember Jesus Christ 75 

Jesus Christ? Not to remember Jesus Christ is to 
forget God, and to forget God is self-destruction. We 
turn with horror from the suicide; but moral and 
spiritual suicides are all about us. What a vast wreck¬ 
age human society carries upon the open seas of its 
life! How hapless and hopeless are the souls without 
faith in Jesus Christ. And I am reminded that the 
application of this principle is not confined to indi¬ 
viduals. The nation that sinneth, it shall die; the gov¬ 
ernment that blasphemes God, it shall perish; Soviet 
Russia could have sinned against every sound economic 
principle and perhaps survived; debased her currency 
and still held at least the allegiance of her own people; 
cursed the governments of her rivals and remained im¬ 
mune from foreign attack. But Soviet Russia cannot 
blaspheme God and live; her own people will forge 
weapons of a terrible vengeance in the white fires of 
their deathless religious instincts; forge them even 
though their churches be desecrated and their priests 
slain; forge them and use them. 

And let us not in fancied isolation and proud self¬ 
ishness feel a false security. 

This is to me the message of the day when we gather 
about the table of His remembrance:—when together 
in the bonds of a deathless fellowship we eat and drink, 
showing forth His death and resurrection :—Remember 
Jesus Christy 


7 


WHAT THE DEVIL ASKED 

Text: Job 1:9. “Doth Job fear God for 
naught V’ 

“Doth Job fear God for naught ?” are the words of 
the devil which might be stated in their converse and 
modernised form, “What’s his price ?” The prince of 
darkness is frankly of the opinion that Joh, whose out¬ 
ward goodness he does not deny, is merely keeping the 
bond, returning God service,—unusual service, to be 
sure,—but for very unusual temporal and spiritual 
blessings received by divine favour. 

“Hast thou not made a hedge about him V 9 continues 
Satan, pressing his contention, “and about his house 
and about all that he hath on every side ? thou hast 
blessed the work of his hands and his substance is in¬ 
creased in the land,”—“but put forth thy hand now, 
and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to 
thy face.” In other words, “Certainly Job is reli¬ 
gious; but Job is prosperous. Impoverish him and 
watch him revert to type; let him know bitterness and 
sorrow, and he will become another devil.” 

Also we see the inference that godliness inspired by 
selfishness is worthless, that it is a counterfeit; and 
good doctrine this certainly is even when the devil be¬ 
comes its mouthpiece. The eminent Scottish divine, 
Dr. Watkinson, has said, “The devil’s theology is 

usually orthodox; his failure is elsewhere.” At this 

76 


77 


What the Devil Ashed 

point one might “well paraphrase the immortal words 
of an heroic nurse, and say, “Theology is not enough.” 

And now to those who have followed the exquisitely 
written story of Job, one of the literary masterpieces 
of all masterpieces, unfolds the travail of the soul; and 
the torture of the body of this man who stands for all 
ages as the epitome of faithfulness and the sum of 
human virtues. Have you found any test he was not 
called upon to meet? Ah, there was not one link of 
weakness in his armour; he survived, came off more 
than conqueror, gave the lie to Lucifer; vindicated 
God; won the victor’s crown. 

I wonder whether we accept the principle; whether 
we believe this story of the man of many trials, or 
whether the ancient riddle has a certain fascination for 
us: “Hoes Job fear God for naught?”—has every man 
his price? What think you? Cynical days these are, 
we say. Why I read,—but what’s the use? I read 
and you read—what? the current jazz of public life; 
the lurid tale of spectacular moral failure; not the 
wholesome best nor the average commonplace. We 
wait here for reasoned truth. Hoes Job fear God for 
naught? Hot the addle-headed chaser after latest 
fads. Hoes Job, the representative man of affairs, the 
churchman of repute,—does he serve God for naught? 
Are all men, or most men, average, home-making men, 
liars ? That’s the question. What of the underpinning 
of society ? its foundations ? 

Once a friend said as we talked in the lobby of a 
hotel, “Come downstairs and watch Young America in 
the dance of death.” As he spoke, he looked at me 
half-mockingly. Presently we saw them,—a hundred, 
perhaps two hundred, hardly more,—about crowded 
tables, and then when the music began we saw them 


78 


What Men Need Most 


hurrying to the cleared centre of the great room:— 
mere boys and girls, many of them; they belonged at 
home (I wonder how many had no fit homes). I loathe 
the steps they seemed to revel in; I find it hard at such 
times to keep these two hands off the necks of the gray- 
haired roues who now and then appear upon the scene. 
I tremble for the boyhood and the girlhood of the land, 
and, thinking of my own, pray God with agony of soul, 
to save them from the body of such death. 

But I have no time for certain implications of the 
devil’s riddle. I turned to my friend a little later, and 
said, “You wouldn’t care to say that all, nor nearly all, 
nor many of those lassies and those lads are evil V 7 
He waited, and I continued, “And I am glad when I 
watch them that God reminds me that the population 
of the metropolitan area of Hew York is nine mil¬ 
lions.” 

And his face sobered as he came upon a new thought. 
How few there are, after all, who live out at the moral 
extremes of society, even in Hew York! Listen, it so 
happens that my friendship circle which, because of 
circumstances in my ministry that have made me a 
wanderer on the face of the earth is very wide, does 
not, to my knowledge, include a husband and wife 
separated by law; nor a man who committed murder. 
It has in it ghastly figures of suffering and grief and 
sin; and standing out like a rugged peak of renuncia¬ 
tion, confession and transformation, is one man who 
betrayed a trust; confessed a crime; served a sentence 
in a federal prison, and then returned to his own peo¬ 
ple to win back all. that he had lost, and more. 

I distrust the individual to-day who persists in say¬ 
ing, with a knowing half-leer: “He has his price,—if 
you can find it”; “You can get him if you go after 


What the Devil Asked 79 

him right.” That man says more than he realises; 
tells too much about himself. “Does Job fear God for 
naught?” I believe in Job. 

Every man who serves God, serves Him for naught. 
Any man who in selfishness puts a price on his labour 
when he turns to the Architect of the universe, in reply 
to the “help-wanted” advertisement of the eternities, 
finds himself without work, not because the work is 
done and not because the Master of the workmen is 
unreasonable, or unwilling, but because he himself has 
laid down a condition that not even God can meet. A 
religion dependent upon temporal rewards is not true 
religion; is not Christian; for religion is an experi¬ 
ence of the soul, and the soul cannot live on bread and 
meat and physical reward. There were those who fol¬ 
lowed Jesus because He distributed fish and cakes; not 
a small company they made: but they did not fear 
Him, love Him, serve Him, and in reality these got 
nothing from Him. 

The gifts of God are different; they are unique. 
Cakes and fish are found in many shops. Ho, the 
multitude that came out from the towns to sit at His 
feet and munch sandwiches, those who came for that 
purpose -had scarcely managed their last swallow, be¬ 
fore they were howling, “Crucify Him.” Those who 
fear, who serve God, serve Him for naught. It took 
the disciples some time to discover this; they quarrelled 
over the seats they desired to occupy in the Heavenly 
kingdom; they had not learned the lesson when Cal¬ 
vary reared its skull-shaped head above their path; but 
they learned it! They learned it! Does Job fear God 
for naught? Ask Stephen and Peter and John and 
Paul! 

But religion and worldly prosperity very frequently 


80 


What Men Need Most 


go forward hand in hand. Job is not the only man 
who has been both rich and godly; honoured and hon¬ 
est. Nor is poverty necessarily a sign of purity, or 
misfortune a mark of godliness. Other things being 
equal, a Christian ought, to have a better chance for 
honest temporal success than a sinner. I am fully per¬ 
suaded that honesty,—plain, old-fashioned honesty,— 
is the best policy. But no Christian asks God to give 
him an automobile, a bank account, a cabinet position, 
or domestic felicity, as a return for being Christlike. 
And it is equally true that the graces and the unique 
powers of religion cannot be purchased. You perhaps 
recall the disillusionment of Simon the Sorcerer: 
“Now when Simon/’ the Scripture runs, “saw that 
through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy 
Ghost was given, he offered them money . . . but Peter 
said unto him, Thy silver perish with thee, because 
thou hast sought to obtain the gift of God with money.” 
Profit and piety are, as another has said, “utterly irre¬ 
concilable in religious thought and motive, although 
they are often and naturally coincident in practical 
life.” 

The rewards of God for those who truly serve Him, 
the rewards that do not wait for eternity, are spiritual, 
and therefore abiding. The Christian may not be as¬ 
sured temporal blessings or even physical immunities, 
because he is a Christian; he may even see the ungodly 
man favoured in his storehouse and market above the 
children of light. But he is assured attention and 
approbation,—divine attention and approbation. God 
looketh upon a good man with approval; a good man 
findeth favour in his sight. To those who love God 
such attention and such approbation mean infinitely 
more than gold. 



What the Devil Ashed 


81 


I have a friend whose grandfather was a Virginia 
slave-owner before the Civil War. When that dark 
tragedy of divided households settled down upon the 
land, he donned a uniform of grey and went out to 
give his youth, his all, to his state. Behind him were 
the holiest values of his life,—a young wife and an 
infant son. In the sad days which followed, the time 
came when the darker evils of war,—fear, the fear of 
violence and hunger, starvation,—approached the white 
house in which the young mother and her helpless child 
sat in their agony of waiting. Then two negroes, a 
black woman and a black man, two of the new free¬ 
men, refused the gift of emancipation, scorned the 
alluring promises of their old plantation associates, and 
without a promise or a hope of reward stood guard 
over that distracted home. They tended the pitiful 
crops; they kept the fires upon the hearth and the milk 
in the crocks; they filled the long winter evenings with 
their songs and in the bosom of their childlike faith 
nourished the soul, comforted the mind of their mis¬ 
tress whose love was often close to despair. 

When after Appomattox the husband and father re¬ 
turned, a broken and penniless man, and found them 
standing guard, the only reward that he could offer 
them was gratitude,—gratitude unutterable, unmeas¬ 
urable. But that was all he could have paid them had 
he come back a millionaire. Their cup of happiness 
overflowed; only a few years ago that old master, a 
grey-haired Confederate veteran, stood in the Senate of 
his state and said, “When I am tempted to doubt my 
God and my fellowman, I wander in memory, if not in 
fact, to the private burial plot behind the house where 
I was born, and stop beside two graves, the graves that 
hold the sacred dust of my coloured mammy and her 



82 


What Men Need Most 


son, who kept the greater curse of war from my loved 
ones while I fought, who without a thought of gain 
scorned freedom and risked their lives, because they 
loved me and my people. I never paid them because I 
never could, and because I understood.” The highest 
reward is the attention and approbation of one we love 
and the greatest gift a man may receive is God’s recog¬ 
nition and understanding. 

Men and women, there are relationships and associa¬ 
tions in life which are “desecrated” by the very thought 
of temporal profit, of worldly gain. Let us paraphrase 
that text again; “Does a mother serve her children for 
naught?” What conditions your attitude toward your 
child? Have you ever stopped to analyse your feel¬ 
ings toward your son or your daughter ? Why do you 
love them, plan for them, dream for them, worry about 
them, toss restless upon your sleepless bed pondering 
the problems that affect them? Why? Because they 
will repay you some day, somehow? You don’t even 
give consideration in seriousness to my query. 

I say, there are relationships in life that are dese¬ 
crated by the very thought of profit, temporal gain. 
Is friendship conditioned upon cash returns? God 
pity you if yours is, for then you have never possessed 
a friend. Some years ago a Boston man of wealth was 
approached by one of his long-time associates with the 
request for a loan. The man approached, hesitated 
for a moment and then said, “I can’t loan you money; 
for I won’t think of you in terms of business. You 
may be willing that I should, but I can’t afford to. 
Take the money and let me forget it. Then if you 
can’t forget, give it back some day when I’m not look¬ 
ing.” The man may have been lacking in sound busi¬ 
ness judgment, but I am bound to believe that his 


What the Devil Asked 83 

instinct was sound, that it did not lead him astray, for 
there are relationships which are desecrated by the very 
thought of gain. 

The highest achievements in science, the most sub¬ 
lime creations in art, have been the children of the 
womb of poverty, and of the lap of unselfish sacrifice. 

Another has said, “It is only when we serve God for 
naught that we discover the infinite riches God’s naught 
stands for.” The affairs of the heart; the arrange¬ 
ments of genius; the high adventures of the human 
mind; the conquests of the immortal soul;—these oc¬ 
cupy realms among the relationships which are dese¬ 
crated by the very thought of temporal gain. And I 
say to you that human nature is capable of far more 
disinterestedness than we give it credit for. Don’t 
doubt your fellows:—trust them; believe in them. Of 
course you will be disappointed in some and deceived 
in others; disappointed and deceived in the future as 
you have been in the past. But keep on believing. 
Make it a habit of your mind; the exercise will enrich 
and beautify your own soul and it will make others 
better than they ever dreamed they could become. God 
only knows how much of cleansing in my heart has been 
accomplished by the faith that my friends have dared 
repose in me. God trusts us! Let us emulate His 
spirit, and trust each other. Down with the devil’s 
riddle, and its unsavory satellites of cynicism and sus¬ 
picion. 

Do you say, Ah, well, one never knows, though, until 
the test comes. Job without the boils is not Job. To 
be sure, but by the goodly examples that Job and the 
rest have set out before us, I elect to believe, to believe, 
—not to doubt; to believe, until Job by his failure in 
the test proves the implications of the devil’s riddle, to 



84 


What Men Need Most 


be true and not to doubt, to doubt with soul-destroying 
cynicism and miserable speculations, until the perse¬ 
cuted hero, surrounded by bis mockers and false 
friends, has vindicated himself. 

Job is a supreme illustration of the fact that supreme 
characters are revealed only by great ordeals, and fre¬ 
quently great ordeals reveal individuals we had ap¬ 
praised as commonplace or ordinary, as supreme. I 
remember a Victoria Cross captain of the Gordon 
Highlanders whom I met in London during the war. 
He was having his first leave in three years; had just 
returned from the front in Mesopotamia. We travelled 
as far as Glasgow together. When the war opened he 
was a second-rate pugilist. One of the characters I 
remember best of all those glorious fellows I came to 
know in France had been a shoe salesman in a small 
central western town. I cannot think of him without 
a warm glow flooding my soul. Does Job fear God 
for naught? Absolutely yes, Mr. Devil. You don’t 
know it; you can’t know, but there are relationships 
and dedications in life which are desecrated by the 
very thought of gain. 

Finally, we will not overlook the fact that Job, not 
God, answered the devil’s question, the question Satan 
asked of the Heavenly Father. And Job answered, not 
as speaks a witness in the chair, but with his life. Job 
answered with ruined crops and burned storehouses, a 
broken household and a diseased, festering body. Yes, 
Job’s answer cost much, and nearly all. 

Do I serve God for naught, or have I named my 
price? I rather think that the question is especially 
timely for the minister to-day, and I have been think¬ 
ing about it in the light of an old experience. Years 
ago a young preacher stood in the combination parlour, 


What the Devil Ashed 85 

dining-room and sitting-room of a small home mis¬ 
sionary parsonage, stood in front of a small air-tight 
wood stove with a letter in his hand. He was slowly 
reading the letter to his wife. It was to the man a 
remarkable communication,—a call to a city church 
and to a salary of $1,500.00—exactly five times the 
salary he was then receiving, a call to personal oppor¬ 
tunity in study, to the fellowship with kindred spirits 
and to the pride of preaching. 

As he finished reading he looked beyond his young 
wife and out through the window to the half-finished 
church building. The carpenters had laid down their 
tools when he had picked up that letter to read it to 
his wife! The little house in which he stood, his hands 
had nailed together; and now his eyes dropped to the 
slight figure of the beautiful girl in front of him, the 
bride he had led three thousand miles from home and 
kindred to share with him the hardships of a pioneer 
life. 

What he found in those steadfast, unfaltering eyes 
of brown must have reassured him, for he reached out 
and drew her into the circle of his arm, lifted the top 
of the old air-tight stove and with a melodramatic 
flourish, an air of high mock tragedy, he dropped the 
“call” into the flame that leaped up to receive it. That 
was years ago, but to the eyes of one who saw it all, 
the picture of the strong man and the beautiful woman, 
and the letter falling into the stove, will never fade. 

Doth Job fear God for naught? There are some 
things that the very thought of gain desecrates. 



8 

THE GRIP THAT HOLDS 

Text: St. Matthew 17:20. "7/ ye have 

faith . . . nothing shall he impossible unto 
you” 

Years ago I went with a famous Indian artist and 
others on a fishing and picture expedition into the Cas¬ 
cade Mountains in Oregon. One afternoon, near the 
head waters of the Hood River, a few miles below the 
Hood River Glacier, I had an experience out of which 
this message comes. 

Our party had for several miles followed the “hur¬ 
ricane-deck” of a precipitous range of lesser mountains, 
when it became necessary to descend to the river level 
for a greatly desired picture. The two United States 
forest-rangers who were piloting us began cautiously 
to drop downward. After a time, being somewhat 
familiar with the country generally, and growing im¬ 
patient with our slow progress, I started off alone by 
what I thought to be a more direct and an easier way. 

The region of the Cascades, in which we were, 

abounds in great ledges and slides of decomposed or 

“rotten” granite. Often what at first appears to be a 

safe and sound path crumbles suddenly beneath the 

climber’s feet. I had taken only a few steps from my 

companions when my footing failed, and, sprawling 

headlong, I shot over the ledge. I still have very vivid 

86 


87 


The Grip That Holds 

recollections of how that thread of a river looked with 
its spray dashing into mist against jagged, up-reaching 
rocks, several hundred feet below. 

But, fortunately for my story, a kind Providence had 
timed and directed my fall. Out from the sheer wall 
of the cliff at my “point of departure’’ grew a sturdy 
little mountain-pine. For live miles in either direc¬ 
tion I have scanned that mountain-side for a similar 
growth,—in vain. It was the one place where my acro¬ 
batic demonstration could be completed without the 
assistance of an undertaker. Madly I hurled myself 
upon the tiny tree. Its twisted trunk was scarcely 
larger than my two wrists. I clutched it with my 
hands. I entwined it with my limbs, and prayed that 
it might not fail,—and all this in a winged second of 
time that was an eternity of fear. The tree held! 

After my horror-stricken companions had lifted me 
to safety, and I had recovered my nerve sufficiently to 
complete the journey ,—following the guide ,—I stood 
by the boiling, thundering stream, and looked up at 
the little tree. Gnarled, stunted, scarred by the rocks 
of avalanches, it was not a thing of beauty; but I am 
sure that you will understand me when I say that it 
looked better to me than any lordly sequoia of the 
forest. 

Out of that mountain experience, so nearly a tragedy, 
has come to my life a message well worth the terror 
of the ordeal—a message of faith, a message of power 
for service, a message of triumph,—the message of the 
grip that holds. 

A tiny seed falls into the narrow crevice of a mighty 
granite cliff. The warmth of the sun-heated stone 
opens a way for the first eager rootlet. The rootlet 
follows the moisture-widened seam into the very breast 


88 


What Men Need Most 


of the precipice. It grows, strengthens, and multi¬ 
plies. It forces new chambers, establishes new strong¬ 
holds for itself, and its fellows. The tree develops. 
It beats away the unfriendly storm, and hardens in the 
tempest. When spring opens, and slides thunder down 
upon it from the upper heights, it fastens itself the 
more firmly in the heart of the mountain. And, when 
it stands between the plunging body of a careless man 
and broken ledges far below, it does not fail; its grip 
holds. 


Tradition 

What is the grip that holds? It is the grip of 
tradition. Tradition handles the strong man as a 
nurse handles the babe; and it is master of trades, in¬ 
dustries, labour, and systems of business. It is the 
director of our simplest habits; it clothes us, shaves 
us, feeds us, and smiles for us. It gowns woman. It 
says, “Yes,” for the child, and “No.” It is polite and 
impolite; circumspect and cruel; it is good and it is 
bad. Here it binds a church with the usages of yes¬ 
terday, and holds her eyes closed to the larger meaning 
of “Feed my lambs,” while yonder it fastens a poten- 
tially great philanthropy in the groove of mere 
charity. 

Only a few years ago tradition called the Wright 
brothers fools. Tradition said the world was flat, and 
sent snapping curs and mobs tapping their foreheads 
after a certain citizen of Genoa who declared that the 
world was round. Tradition says that things are and 
will be, because they were. It is the friend of both 
good and evil, and frequently the enemy of better and 
best. 


89 


The Grip That Holds 

How strong is the grip of tradition ? He knows who 
has struggled to break it. Statesman, teacher, artist, 
inventor, prophet, reformer, business man, and school¬ 
boy,—these all have felt its heavy hand. We are all 
in the grip of tradition. And he who breaks the grip 
of tradition where it is evil, is every whit a man. 

But there are worthy traditions, kindly, smiling, holy 
traditions. There are landmarks of faith and practice; 
there are traditions of truth and hope; there are treas¬ 
ured memories, and habits of prayer and ministry that 
are as the perfect fruits of an unscarred tree. Men 
do well to be held in the groove of an ethical standard 
that a less complex business life fixed; men do well to 
cherish the prejudice against a lie and the reverence 
for liberty that opened wounds in the bodies of their 
fathers; men do well to honour an ancient virtue by the 
continued application of its truth. Tradition has 
bands that can be broken only with infinite loss to 
mankind. 


Knowledge 

What is the grip that holds ? The grip that holds is 
the grip of knowledge. The world has no successful 
protest or argument against knowledge. The world 
surrenders to the man who knows. Generally men and 
women fail in business or politics because they do not 
know. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowl¬ 
edge.” The call of industry, the call of the church, 
the call of public life everywhere, is for men and 
women who know. The greatest discovery that any 
man ever makes is the discovery of himself, his 
strength and weakness, his-true relation to life. 

Emerson has said that no great task is ever accom- 


90 


What Men Need Most 


plished without enthusiasm, and there can he no last¬ 
ing fervour of enthusiasm without knowledge. No man 
becomes greatly in earnest over a proposition with 
which he is not thoroughly familiar. Information 
plus inspiration multiplied by perspiration equals con¬ 
summation; this is the equation of victory. 

A few generations ago the Northwest was an un¬ 
known and unappreciated country to the East. The 
president of the United States announced that it was 
not worth a struggle with England. Daniel Webster 
said that it was not worth while because the day would 
never come when a railroad would cross the Rockies ; 
that the Oregon country was forever too far removed 
from the centres of world-trade. 

But Marcus Whitman with his “golden-haired Nar- 
cissa” “farther than flew the imperial eagles of Rome,” 
journeyed from New England to his life’s work on the 
Columbia. He saw the great rivers crowded with fish, 
the mighty mountains crowned with forests of emerald, 
the far-stretching, fertile valleys, and the sunset ocean 
with its fabulous commerce of centuries to be. He 
came to know what others had not dreamed of. 

Marcus Whitman was a patriot as well as a mis¬ 
sionary ; he loved his country; and, when there reached 
his ears the Hudson Bay traders’ whispered plottings, 
he turned his pony’s head toward Washington. Across 
a frozen continent he rode, the mightiest ride of his¬ 
tory. 

Reaching Washington after unspeakable hardships, 
he told his story. So well did he tell it, because he 
knew, that the president’s mind was changed, Daniel 
Webster’s mind was changed, and in the early spring 
the intrepid pioneer, preacher and patriot turned his 
face again toward the Northwest, this time at the head 


The Grip That Holds 91 

of the first caravan of settlers to cross the great West¬ 
ern wilderness. 

Ah, what a journey it was! The rivers were full 
of rotten ice, and there was no grass on the prairies. 
The Indians were unfriendly, and the passes of the 
Rockies were still choked with snow. Often the faint¬ 
hearted murmured, and would have turned back. But 
in the hours of deepest gloom Marcus Whitman stood 
before his followers and told them of the Oregon coun¬ 
try. With flaming eyes and burning cheeks he told 
them of great rivers, fertile valleys, and the far- 
reaching sea. And always he pointed to the flag. He 
knew. 

They did not turn back. They followed on and on. 
Some died and were buried in that first, unmarked 
Oregon trail; but those “heralds of empire” fixed their 
faces as a flint on the sunset. They possessed the land, 
and to-day the Stars and Stripes has four stars, Ore¬ 
gon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, because Marcus 
Whitman knew. 


Faith 

What is the grip that holds ? Faith is the grip that 
holds. Hot tradition, for tradition is broken and set 
aside; not knowledge, for knowledge “passeth away” 
and the present knowledge becomes to-morrow’s tradi¬ 
tion. The world surrenders to the man who knows, 
but heaven and earth belong to the man of faith. 

What do we know? How much absolute knowledge 
have we to-day? The farmer plants the seed, tends 
the crop, gathers the harvest, without knowing the 
chemistry of the grain. The motorman drives the 
electric car without having fathomed the mystery of 


92 


What Men Need Most 


the electric fluid; and how it goes even Edison knows 
not, hut he knows that it goes! We see results and, 
effects; our knowledge of causes, our real knowledge, 
is limited. And how little we know of what we really 
may know! How many legs has a fly? 

We sit, we eat, we stand, we walk, we ride, by faith. 
“We live by faith.” The man who denies God because 
he cannot understand Him is one of the most incon¬ 
sistent fellows in the world, because he continues to 
live, and who has explained life? My best things, my 
holiest treasures, are those intangible, mysterious 
gifts, that mortal mind has never fathomed—friend¬ 
ship, my mother’s smile, the love of the mother of my 
children, faith, God. 

Eaith sent messages under the sea years before the 
first Atlantic cable was laid. Eaith has bridged every 
great river and opened every deep mine. Faith tun¬ 
nelled the Hudson and dug the Panama Canal. Faith 
finds a desert and leaves a waving wheat-field, a blos¬ 
soming orchard, a garden in full bloom. Faith swings 
the cranes of industry, raises cities in the wilderness, 
outlives oppression, advances steadily the whole social 
order, and lifts men and women above angels. Faith 
is the only bridge that ever spanned the grave, the only 
knight who ever conquered death. 

Faith spoke, and Abraham journeyed into the west, 
pitching his tent and building his altars. Faith spoke, 
and Moses led Israel out of Egypt, and gave the world 
her laws. Faith spoke, and science brought inventions 
and medicine and great learning and a million helpful 
things and dropped them into the outstretched hands 
of the race. Faith spoke, and kingdoms rose and fell 
as Faith willed. Faith spoke, and the Bible was 
opened, the Magna Charta was given, the western 


93 


The Grip That Holds 

world was discovered, and liberty found a new name. 
Faith spoke, and Washington led the ragged Conti¬ 
nentals from Lexington to Yorktown. Faith spoke, 
and Abraham Lincoln by way of Appomattox and his 
own Golgotha guided the republic through tempestuous 
seas of slavery and disunion into the safe harbour of 
“liberty and union, now and forever, one and insepa¬ 
rable. 7 ’ Faith spoke, and the Galilean freed the souls 
of men from time’s beginning to its end. 

And faith is speaking, and faith will speak,—will 
speak until labour and capital understand each other; 
until business is firmly established in its just profits, 
and the man who toils with his hands enjoys an ade¬ 
quate return for the sweat of his brow; until little 
children are no longer sacrificed to mines and factories, 
and the virtue of women is no longer bartered to the 
lust of man; until the comity of nations is no longer 
a theory alone, but spreads over all the earth in a 
benign mantle of peace and brotherhood. “If ye have 
faith nothing shall be impossible unto you.” 

Joaquin Miller might well have given his “Colum¬ 
bus” another name, and called it “Faith.” 

“Behind him lay the grey Azores, 

Behind the gates of Hercules; 

Before him not the ghost of shores, 

Before him only shoreless seas. 

The good mate said, ‘How must we pray, 

For lo! the very stars are gone; 

Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?’ 

‘Why, say, “Sail on! sail on! and on!” ’ 

“ ‘My men grow mutinous day by day; 

My men grow ghastly wan and weak.’ 

The stout mate thought of home; a spray 
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 


94 


What Men Need Most 


‘"What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, 

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?’ 

‘Why, you shall say, at break of day, 

“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on !” 7 

“They sailed and sailed as winds might blow, 
Until at last the blanched mate said: 

‘Why, now not even God would know 
Should I and all my men fall dead. 

These very winds forget their way, 

For God from these dread seas is gone. 

Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say — 9 
He said, ‘Sail on! sail*on! and on!’ 

“They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 

‘This mad sea shows his' teeth to-night. 

He curls his lip, he lies in wait, 

With lifted teeth as if to bite! 

Brave Admiral, say but one good word: 

What shall we do when hope is gone V 
The words leaped like a leaping sword: 

‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! sail on!’ 

“Then pale and worn he kept the deck, 

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 
Of*all dark nights ! And then a speck,— 

A light! A light! A light! A light! 

It grew a star-lit flag unfurled! 

It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn; 

He gained a world; he gave that world 
Its grandest lesson, ‘On, sail on!’ ” 


9 

DANIEL, THE HEBREW WHO PURPOSED * 

Text: Daniel 1:8. “But Daniel purposed 
in his heart that he would not defile himself 

I must frankly confess that I cannot sympathise 
with those unfortunate individuals who have struggled 
along through the years with names that they despise, 
for I have always liked my name. But, lest credit be 
given me that I do not deserve, I must make another 
confession and admit that my name was not popular 
with me at the beginning because of its Biblical asso¬ 
ciations. 

I fell in love with the name Daniel because of a 
horse! At the foot of a hill called “Piety,” because 
three ministers lived upon it, in the quiet Oregon town 
of my childhood, resided the “Senator,” a kindly man 
of rugged worth, who was the father of my boyhood 
chum. The “Senator” owned the splendid animal that 
from the first day I saw him—and I was a very small 
lad then—caused me to glory in the name my parents 
had assigned to me, the first-born of their nine chil¬ 
dren. 

What a horse he was! He was as black as night, 
with flowing curly mane and thick, glossy, though not 
over-long tail. His broad back curved easily over hips 
of huge proportions, and his limbs were as flawless as 

* From a series of sermons prepared for The Christian En¬ 
deavor World by writers bearing Bible names. 

95 


96 


What Men Need Most 


the chiselled work of a master sculptor. His ample 
neck was proudly arched and fixed between mighty 
shoulders. His great head was never lowered for more 
than an instant, and his eyes were brimming lakes set 
kindly wide in a forehead smooth and deep. His ears 
were as delicately poised as a woman’s; his spirit was 
the spirit of the high mountains where he was sired; 
and his name was a Dan.” 

Of course I have long since learned that in addition 
to having been arbitrarily fixed as an abbreviation of 
Daniel, the name Dan stands alone with a distinction 
quite its own. But Dan was the nickname fastened 
upon me after the passing of the diminutive Danny, 
which I despised, and this Dan of life’s intimacies 
with the Daniel, now more intelligently valued than 
when the great horse gave me my first heartiness for it, 
have always been to me one and the same. 

Of course when the heroic Hebrew of the Scriptures 
stood before me, and my soul began to apprehend the 
heights and depths of him, my whole mental attitude 
changed, and from a boisterous spirit of self-congratu¬ 
lation I became quiet and humble. Since the first 
change in my spiritual attitude toward the name 
Daniel, the change from loud to quiet, from self- 
satisfaction to self-searching, there has come no other 
change; for who could ever be worthy of such a name, 
however proud he may be to bear it? 

Daniel, the divine judge of the Scriptures, given 
the name Belteshazzar by the prince of the eunuchs, 
was royal born and lived a royal life. He was led 
away as a captive into a land not of his fathers, but 
his soul was never in chains, for he never surrendered 
the spiritual authority of his life. It takes a real man 
to survive riches; poverty is more easily borne. Do 



Daniel, the Hebrew Who Purposed 97 

not pity the child reared in worthy surroundings, how¬ 
ever humble; but children of the rich, pampered and 
unrestrained, with every whim granted and every ap¬ 
petite served, must be indeed of a sturdy mind and 
morally well-favoured to survive their temptations. 

Daniel the Hebrew was rich in his physical inherit¬ 
ance, but he had a richer soul, and, when in his early 
youth temporal holdings were swept away and he was 
set down in the centre of a drunken court, he could 
not be spoiled. It is hard to withstand hatreds, but it 
is even more difficult to survive some friendships. This 
lad who held fast the faith, who could not be over¬ 
whelmed by either adversity or success, failed not, be¬ 
cause “he purposed in his heart,” and trusted in his 
God. Every life is determined by its purposes. Daniel 
purposed that he would not defile himself, and his 
character shines on the page of history as a white light. 
Because he had “purposed,” he refused the king’s 
meat and drink; because he had “purposed,” he would 
not bow down to an idol, but would pray with win¬ 
dows open toward far-away, humbled Jerusalem; be¬ 
cause he had “purposed,” the lion’s den could not turn 
him back; and, faithful to the truth, he translated 
dreams that announced ruin to his benefactors when 
silence must have seemed to be for himself the surer 
safety. Because Daniel “purposed,” he made his body 
strong to live a hundred years, his mind alert to com¬ 
prehend all learning, and his soul a fit place for God 
to conceive and bring forth mighty prophecies. 

Daniel’s purpose against defilement slew lustful ap¬ 
petite, destroyed selfish fear and unworthy ambition. 
It gave to his life a fixed goal and high objective. It 
drew him inexorably on so that he stopped nowhere; 
He tarried not with Nebuchadnezzar, with Belshazzar, 


98 


What Men Need Most 


with Darius, with Cyrus, though he served them all 
faithfully and well. He was ever moving toward the 
fulness of the will of Jehovah, and he belonged to no 
earthly king; he was the property of God. 

We will not deceive ourselves; standing alone Daniel 
was as helpless as any man of us, but he never stood 
alone. He practised perfectly the constant presence 
of his heavenly Father. His faith was magnificent in 
its simplicity and its promptness. There is no indi¬ 
cation in the record that he hesitated a single instant 
about entering his room for his accustomed devotions 
after the establishing of the imperial decree against 
any other worship than that offered to the king. He 
did not move an eyelash to question the order that 
came as the result of his obedience to God rather than 
to men, and which cast him to the man-eating lions. 
Daniel knew “whom he had believed,” and was 
“fully persuaded.” He saw through because he lived 
through; because his spiritual dwelling place was 
established far beyond the black darkness of the evil 
times in which he had his physical existence. His 
gaze pierced the mysteries of a monarch’s nightmares; 
his vision swept beyond the cloud-hung mountains of 
the old dispensation to the glorified slopes of the new, 
because the real house of his habitation was not made 
with hands, and was not set down in the heathen city 
of his captivity. 

“Faith is the victory that overcomes the world,” and 
to-day, as in the days of Daniel, this faith in the living 
and one God is translating dreams into realities. It 
is helping to keep men and women erect in the cur¬ 
rents of passion and greed that swirl about them. It 
is refusing the command of an age that bows lower 
before gold than the Chaldeans bowed before the great 


Daniel, the Hebrew Who Purposed 99 

image. It is addressing the growing programme of 
social justice in the terms of Jesus. It is saving the 
heathen cities of civilisation from themselves, with 
social settlements, night-schools, and play-grounds, 
with child-betterment legislation and pure-food laws. 
It is this faith, this Daniel faith, that is evangelising 
the world; and this same faith will end war, and 
bring out of the chaos of it a new order of brother¬ 
hood the like of which no sun has ever shone upon. 
Do we hear the challenge of “our” faith? What 
boots it, then, where we live, how we feel, what we 
suffer, when we die? The same unfailing resource of 
power that Daniel drew upon is our supply to-day. 

The courage of Daniel has always inspired me. In 
a great book at home, as a lad, I first saw a copy of 
the famous picture of the Hebrew prophet with hands 
bound in front of him, standing erect before the cow¬ 
ering lions. From that first hour when he dared argue 
with the director of the king’s dining-room to the late 
afternoon when tradition says that his eyes heheld 
again his beloved Jerusalem and rested for the last 
time upon its rebuilt walls, Daniel was daily facing 
lions, and daily taming them. His physical courage 
was unsurpassed. He was a virile, manly man. His 
moral courage in its supreme moments, in all the re¬ 
corded profane and sacred history of the world, no 
man has ever surpassed; perhaps one man, Joseph, 
equalled it. 

The secret of Daniel’s courage was hid in what he 
believed. A doubter is never a brave man, and 
courage depends very much upon the elements of a 
man’s faith. 

I have read somewhere of a pygmy African tribe 
whose medicine-men teach that there is nothing after 



100 


What Men Need Most 


death; that the grave ends all. As the result of this 
teaching, the tribe gives all of its energies to the sus¬ 
taining of physical life, to the satisfying of bestial pas¬ 
sion. It has gone to the most remote places of interior 
jungles to escape conflicts with neighbouring tribes, 
and it has developed great cunning in ensnaring and 
crippling wild animals without danger to its hunters. 
Its women are cruel, and its men are cowards. On the 
other hand, the Japanese soldiers are the most invin¬ 
cible, because physical life to the Japanese is abso¬ 
lutely as nothing when compared with the honour and 
pleasure that are in the next world as immediate re¬ 
wards for dying in battle for the emperor. 

Daniel knew that he was not accountable to earthly 
kings, but to the King of all kings. He knew that his 
body was simply the house of his spirit; he was con¬ 
cerned to keep it clean; but, when wild beasts threat¬ 
ened it, he was not disturbed; for he knew that their 
fangs could not tear his immortal soul. 

The perspective of Daniel’s life was spiritual. 
Therefore, while he was eminently practical, and 
found favour with his captors because of what he 
knew and did, not once did he make the mistake of 
putting temporal and minor things first. Whenever 
the issue was drawn, he always decided without hesi¬ 
tation for the things that are eternal. 

The statement, “It does not make any difference 
what a man believes so long as he lives right,” is a 
great fallacy. Ho man does live right who grovels in 
his mind, who goes through life without any deep-set 
convictions. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is 
he.” A coward is the child of doubt. 

Daniel is the world’s towering human example of 
the power of a fixed character. Living through three 


Daniel, the Hebrew Who Purposed 101 

heathen dynasties and under four kings, he was coun¬ 
sellor, confidant, and prime minister to them all, 
though they held him nominally a captive. But at 
no time in his long life did he sacrifice a single prin¬ 
ciple of his religion or swerve a hair’s breadth from 
his spiritual purpose. He was implicitly trusted, and 
his personality caused him to be greatly loved. We 
find no record that he was ever doubted by God or 
man. A life that changes its fundamentals easily, 
that vacillates morally, that has no fixed course, could 
not have survived the disasters that overtook the vain¬ 
glorious Nebuchadnezzar, the drunken Belshazzar, and 
the martial Darius. Daniel survived the rulers who 
successively honoured him, and was left undisturbed 
in his high estate while his temporal benefactors were 
utterly destroyed, because his reliability and great 
moral worth, coupled with his profound wisdom, made 
him an indispensable asset to a new king. 

“The tumult and the shouting dies, 

The captains and the kings depart”— 

but some values never change . If there have been a 
few men without whom the world would have failed 
and in whom God was supremely honoured, Daniel 
was one of those men. In only one other personality 
of history have body, mind and spirit been so har¬ 
moniously synchronised into a symmetrical whole. 
Jesus alone “of all the sons of woman born” trans¬ 
cends in completeness of character, diversity of serv¬ 
ice, and supernatural authority, this purposeful He¬ 
brew, Daniel, the “divine judge.” 


10 


EXTREMITY AND OPPORTUNITY 

Text: St. Matthew 26: 45. “The hour is at 
hand.” 

Jesus had come to His hour. He was the central 
figure in the supreme paradox of time. He was help¬ 
less and He was all-sufficient; He was defeated and 
He was triumphant; He was on the road of humilia¬ 
tion, facing Calvary and His feet had begun to press the 
glory that led to His coronation; He was at the ex¬ 
tremity of His humanity and about to accept the op¬ 
portunity of His divinity. As a teacher He was the 
rejected; as king of the Jews He was the denied, but 
as Saviour of the world He was settling into His 
throne. 

To-day man is in the hour of his extremity. It is the 
hour of suspicion. We feel suspicious of one another; 
we feel suspicious of ourselves. Nations put their 
trust in doubts again, and a world that had begun to 
vision the era of good feeling, for which it had paid 
dearly enough, hears once more the ancient hammers 
of discord clanging upon anvils of envy and greed. 

It is the hour of broken vows. We promised our¬ 
selves, we promised one another, we promised God. 
All of our treasure had been brought forward. In 
limb and life and liberties, in blood and bonds, in body 
and in soul, we pledged ourselves to build the new 
world. Nothing that we could lay upon the sacrificial 


Extremity and Opportunity 103 

altar was dear enough to be withheld, and so supremely 
epic was the need that small gifts came to have colossal 
value. 

Disaster stalked our institutions; our lines were 
bending behind Mt. Kemmel; armies had been swal¬ 
lowed up; morale was a tottering wall, a crumbling 
tower; we were a sober, a repentant people; we made 
our covenant with God. 

As nations we made it. We said, “Never again will 
w r e build a peace upon armaments and fleets; the rec¬ 
ognition of the will to conquer, the strength to take 
and hold. We will perish in these bloody fields; we 
and all of ours will leap to greet the bitter death; but 
dying we will pay the price of the better part, and 
our children’s children shall at last be free.” 

As churches we made it. The cloaks for selfishness 
and pride slipped from us as garments outgrown. We 
talked little of denominational programmes as such. 
We emphasised the larger things that as Christians we 
possess in common. We spoke as prophets of the brave 
days to come when all should toil together. We heeded 
voices that called us into conference, and the dreams 
of a united Protestantism began to take form. 

As individuals we made it. We promised God; we, 
who in peaceful years had been able to deceive the 
world or brazenly to flaunt it, could not in those naked 
hours find a covering for smallness. We grew in 
spiritual stature, and became men and women for the 
times. 

Now the enemy has withdrawn; and as, when 
Nebuchadnezzar turned away from the walls of Jeru¬ 
salem to meet the Egyptians coming out of the south, 
Israel bound again the slave she had in the penitence 
of her adversity set free, so we even now are reaching 


104 


What Men Need Most 


for the renounced weapons of our political partisan¬ 
ship, the discarded vices of our ecclesiastical divisions, 
the sins confessed, and the flesh-pots of our unregen¬ 
erated hearts. Are we to lose the spiritual values 
established by the World War? God forbid that we 
should, and God pity us if we do; for, if we lose them, 
we have lost the war. 

It is the hour of unrest. Ho man is satisfied. 
Labour strikes,—strikes in spite of contracts and 
against the orders of leaders; capital profiteers; to 
those who would appraise the times a wild array of 
charges and countercharges present themselves. A 
thousand social physicians shout their panaceas. Hoth- 
ing is stable. In politics party lines are not only 
obliterated, but traditional policies are repudiated 
with all the unconcern of a thoughtless guest who 
ignores a dinner engagement. In the church we are 
violently mystical, or we spend passionless days in 
writing social-service creeds, or we wander listlessly 
over the paths between. Our patriotism is a coat of 
many colours; it has the red of anarchy to comfort 
the bomb-thrower, and from its sinister black we make 
a gag for freedom. Economically we are at two ex¬ 
tremes; at the one we cry: “How we will throw off 
the restraints imposed by the war; we will repudiate 
the agreements and compacts made between labour 
and capital when the terror of impending defeat 
forced us to the conference table. Again it shall be 
master and man.” At the other extreme we shout, 
“The millennium has come to Russia. Let us enter in.” 

It is the hour of suffering. The world is a vast 
house of sickness. Mr. Hoover has said, that in a 
single year fifteen millions of people face starvation. 
John R. Mott has declared that more children, women, 


Extremity and Opportunity 105 

and men have died as the direct results of the war, 
since the Armistice, than were slain during all the 
years of the bloody struggle. 

What shall we do ? What can we do ? Let no man 
say that the evil in man now has the undisputed right 
of way. By the side of the pictures of promises 
broken and selfishness returning to its own, hang those 
of the purpose to he true, in the faces of men and 
women who have not ceased to pour themselves out in 
benefactions for mankind. In these is the hope of the 
race; with them lies our promise for the better to¬ 
morrow. 

But what of this hour, the hour of suspicion, and 
broken vows, of unrest and suffering and need? It is 
the hour of man’s extremity; the plans of man have 
broken down, for man himself has failed. He used 
the weapons that he knew, and they have buckled in 
his hand. It is the hour of man’s extremity, but the 
hour of man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. 

In September, 1915, a young Scotchman, a lieu¬ 
tenant, only a few days before he died, while gallantly 
leading his men in a charge, wrote to his mother, 
describing the fearful nature of the conflict, his grow¬ 
ing appreciation of the issues involved, his great fear 
that the super-preparations of the enemy would compel 
an early conclusion of the war with disaster to the 
Allies. In one vivid paragraph he spoke of the in¬ 
adequacy of everything his eyes had seen or his mind 
conjured, and concluded with the words: “Mother, 
God must he.” To-day we are face to face with ex¬ 
tremity’s conclusion, which is extremity’s compulsion. 
“God must be.” 

Whatever my definition of God may he, however I 
may describe and declare Him, if I am an intelligent 


106 


What Men Need Most 

creature, a mind released to think, then I am bound 
to accept the fact of God, for God must be. dSTo other 
hand than His has laid the paths of planets and filled 
space with universes; has made the sun and moon and 
stars, the earth and sky and sea and all that dwell 
therein. Ho other will than His has brought all things 
together. Ho other mind than His can shape the 
answers to these questions. Ho other love than His 
can heal these wounds, allay these suspicions, quench 
these thirsts, comfort these sorrows, forgive these sins, 
raise these dead. God must be. 

Who is God ? How shall we find God ? There are 
a thousand answers to the question, “Who is God?” 
and no one of them, nor all of them together, answer. 
It is impossible for a man to comprehend God. Our 
approach to Him now is as awesome as it was in the 
days of the exodus, as impossible as when Moses heard 
His voice from the burning bush. 

But what of the second question? Ah, that is dif¬ 
ferent; for we have a mediator, one who stands be¬ 
tween, and to the question, “How shall we find God ?” 
the testimony of the ages, the sum of all Christian 
experience, replies, “We find God in Jesus Christ His 
Son, our Lord and Saviour.” And does not the simple 
necessity of the occasion, freed of all dogma, stripped 
of every creedal statement, demand that this Jesus, 
through whom and in whom alone we find God, God 
the omniscient and omnipotent,—that this same Jesus 
must be omniscient and omnipotent too ? that He must 
Himself be very God? 

How our path becomes clear, for Christ has blazed 
it through the wilderness of human doubt, lifted it 
high above the tides of human folly; and He Himself 
has walked upon it. Stumbling blindly about, over- 


Extremity and Opportunity 107 

whelmed by insupportable odds, in our last extremity 
we find “the way.” He was called the Galilean, and 
a Hazarene. He is Jesus. And when we find Jesus 
we find the answer to our question, the solution of our 
problem, the reason for our existence, comfort for our 
sorrow, healing for our sickness, forgiveness for our 
sin, and resurrection for our dead, for in finding Jesus 
we have found God. 

Who is Jesus? Let Him answer: “I am the way, 
the truth, and the life.” He is speaking for all the 
times and circumstances of man. Is this the hour of 
suspicion, of broken vows, of unrest, of suffering and 
needs? Is this the black hour of man’s extremity? 
Then Jesus cries, “I am the way, the truth, and the 
life.” “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “Cast your 
burdens upon me, and ye shall find rest for your 
souls.” 

This is the invitation, the invitation all-inclusive 
and all-satisfying. But it has an alternative. Above 
the scarred and suffering world, the empty ruins of its 
cities of pride and the heaps of its dead, He flings His 
words in crimson letters against a flaming sky, “With¬ 
out me ye can do nothing.” He alone can beat swords 
into ploughshares, equalise social inequalities, destroy 
racial hates, bring the world back from its lust of 
blood to that respect for law and order without which 
no freedom is secure. Christ alone can effectuate the 
parliament of nations; bring to pass the federation of 
the world, and perfect peace. 

Where is Jesus? Let Him answer again: “I am 
with you alway,” and “even unto the end of the 
world.” He was speaking to His disciples, and thus 
He addresses His disciples to-day. And, as those first 


108 


What Men Need Most 


faithful eleven were charged with responsibility for 
the message of Christ’s kingdom in their time, so are 
we who are called Christians charged with the message 
in this fateful hour. 

His physical feet no longer press the path that winds 
between Bethany and Jerusalem; we must be His feet. 
His physical eyes no longer rest upon the walls of 
Jerusalem; we must be His eyes. His physical voice 
no longer cries, “Come unto me”; we must be His 
voice. If Christ has a physical presence to-day, He 
has it through us. He stands or falls as His disciples, 
as Christians, as we, are true or false. And by the 
law of first things, by the call of the needs of dying 
men, by the claims of time and of eternity, our su¬ 
preme business is the discovering of Jesus Christ to 
the groping lost world. 

But the message of this hour will have very largely 
failed if it does not finally become even more per¬ 
sonal. We have said that Christ is dependent upon 
His disciples, that He functions through men and 
women. How vastly important, then, is the task of 
those who would see men and women “Christ-like.” 
Only as we are spiritually equipped can we perform 
our ministry as the representatives of the Lord and 
Saviour of mankind. 

We are discussing the new world, the world that is 
to be, the new world that shall rise from the ashes of 
the old; but there can be no new world without new 
world-builders, and how shall a man become new? 
The answer to that question is in the voice of the ages, 
“Ye must be born again.” We are “new creatures” 
in Christ Jesus, or we are yet dead in our trespasses 
and sins. Let there be no misunderstanding here; not 
by the gifts of our opulence, not by the deeds of our 


'Extremity and Opportunity 109 

vanity, not by self-inflicted penalties, not by bigb 
honours, nor by fine speech, do we fit ourselves to be 
the spiritual torch-bearers of the new era. 

“What can wash away my sin? 

Nothing but the blood of Jesus. 

What can make me whole again? 

Nothing but the blood of Jesus. 

Oh, precious is the flow 
That makes me white as snow; 

No other fount I know, 

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” 

Approaching the present crisis in man and in man’s 
world from any direction, considering him and his 
from all angles, we arrive at the same conclusion; as 
individuals, and as individuals brought together in 
society, we need first of all, we need above all and 
always, Jesus Christ—His forgiveness, His salvation, 
His praise, His power, His passion. We need Jesus, 
Jesus Himself; for Christ in us is our “hope of glory,” 
and our grace to conquer. Without Him we are lost. 

Then let the church give herself anew and fully to 
her supreme, her unique task. With the abandon of 
the disciples who burned with the flame kindled by 
the fiery tongues of the first Pentecost let her cry, 
“One thing I do.” She will release her omnipotent 
energies only by proclaiming “Christ and Him cruci¬ 
fied.” 

Raise the cross! Point to the blood! Preach the 
word; for “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw,—will draw —I will draw all men unto me.” 

I come to you with this message and with no other, 
not alone because the very atmosphere of the times is 
charged with it. I come to you with this message be- 


110 


What Men Need Most 


cause it is the only message that I know in which are 
hope and life. It is the message that I heard first in 
the dear days when I buried my face in my mothers 
lap and lisped the prayers of my childhood; it is the 
message that my father preached in the church that 
his own hands nailed together, and now I tell it to 
my children. It is the message that spoke to me in 
college, and that no words of honest doubt, no super¬ 
ficial criticisms, were able to destroy. I have listened 
to it beneath the low-bending skies of the desert and 
in the solitary places of the mountains. I have heard 
it speak in the storms of the sea. I have been alone 
in the valley of the shadow with my* dead, and it has 
comforted me. Once when the earth about me opened, 
and geysers of molten metal poured upward through 
shattered trees and heaving fields, while walls -crum¬ 
bled and the sky was filled with the missiles of man’s 
hell, when the breath of death came out of the night 
and smothered me, I heard its voice; and pain and 
terror passed from me when he said, “Fear not; I am 
with thee.” It is the message that to this hour has 
followed me all the days of my life; it is the only 
adequate message for a world sick unto death. 


11 

CONQUERORS OF CIRCUMSTANCE 


Text: Philippians 4:13. “I can do all 
things through Christ which strengthened 
me” 

“Resolved: That circumstances make the man rather 
than that man makes his circumstances/ 7 was the sub¬ 
ject of the first debate the writer participated in. He 
spoke in favour of the negative, and still finds himself 
on the same side of the proposition. 

Scientists point to both animals and plants that have 
gradually become extinct as the result of climatic 
changes. They tell us of races of men that have dis¬ 
appeared from the face of the earth as the result of 
their inability to adapt themselves to new physical 
environments. Many of you have seen the sightless 
fish of the Mammoth Cave, creatures of environment. 
In one of the issues of The National Geographic 
Magazine appeared a very interesting story of the 
game territory of the Lake Superior region. It is 
quite remarkable how with the cutting away of the 
great trees and the springing up of smaller trees, 
underbrush, berry-bearing vines, and nut-growing 
bushes that could not flourish in the dense shade of 
the heavy timber, animal life has increased in that 
region until to-day more deer, moose, bear, and other 
wild animals are said to be there than there were a 
hundred years ago. Are they not, very largely, at 

least, creatures of, circumstance ? 

Ill 



112 


What Men Need Most 

Certainly we must consider the far-reaching influ¬ 
ence of environment upon all life. The inhabitants 
of Africa are increasingly dark as they approach the 
equator, and as their habits of life leave them to a 
greater extent exposed to the direct rays of the sun. 
The trees of our Southwest, beginning with the sage¬ 
brush of the lower altitudes and up to six thousand 
feet, blend first into the dwarfed desert cedar, then 
into the more symmetrical and slightly taller pinon, 
and finally reach their full glory, at an altitude of 
from eight to nine thousand feet, in the white pines 
of the San Francisco and White Mountains. These 
trees are certainly the children of the climate and 
environment in which they live. 

Recently a young man was electrocuted in Few 
York, who began his career of evil-doing at the age of 
nine. When he was destroyed by the execution of the 
law, he had been twice a murderer, had committed 
other crimes too numerous to mention, and was less 
than twenty-one. He was conceived and born in sin, 
and reared in exceptionally vile surroundings. A 
leader of public thought, referring to the case, spoke 
of this youth a as the inevitable growth of a degenerate 
social soil.” 

How often great plans have failed because of cir¬ 
cumstances quite beyond the control of those who made 
the plans! The sunken road at Waterloo may havq 
overthrown the incomparable military genius of Ha- 
poleon and dictated European history for a hundred 
years. 

Yes, we must concede the mighty influence of en¬ 
vironment upon men and upon events. But circum¬ 
stance, environment, the characteristics of the external 
world—these are not the main factors. Another scien- 


Conquerors of Circumstance 113 

tist, Dr. Thomson, says that “in higher plants as well 
as in higher animals, there seems to he greater free¬ 
dom from the direct grip of environment.” And Dr. 
Watkinson declares, “All history is the record of the 
revolt of the spirit against the rule of circumstance, 
and of the victories of the human will in life’s gigantic 
struggle.” In this fact, in the colossal and continuing 
warfare of the human soul, is the fascination of his¬ 
tory. 

Upon Alpine heights fighting the icy blasts and 
choking snow are some of earth’s most refined and 
exquisite blossoms. In the deep sea are fish physically 
helpless against their voracious foes, but able to hide 
themselves against the colouring of the ocean’s floor. 
Camels are prepared for their long journeys through 
burning desert sands by nature’s cushioning on their 
feet and a natural water-reservoir. 

And what of man? Have nature and nature’s God 
been less prodigal with him, and is he less resourceful, 
less competent, than the flowers of the field and the 
beasts of the forest ? What of man ? Is he a creature 
of circumstance, held by chains of environment, sub¬ 
ject entirely to external forces and conditions? Jesus 
loved the flowers that smiled up at Him as He walked; 
and He lingered long, I am sure, in grassy glades and 
by purling streams. But it was not over a field of 
daisies nor a rippling lake that He wept; it was over 
Jerusalem, the city. Hot over its stones and walks 
and towers, but over its women and children and men. 
Humanity was His concern, the salvation of the people 
was His mission and His passion. 

What, then, is the attitude of Jesus toward man? 
How does He look upon circumstance and environ¬ 
ment? The Hew Testament shows little respect for 


114 


What Men Need Most 

position, for prestige and power, as such. The weak, 
the poor, the humble, are invited to inherit the earth. 
The overcomers, the conquerors of circumstance, are 
exalted. Jesus, in selecting His disciples, went among 
the lowly, to fishermen instead of to financiers. The 
men with whom He left the interests of His kingdom, 
to whom He gave the stewardship of His cause, were 
men despised and rejected as was their Lord. 

The lowly Nazarene, and not the haughty Pharisee; 
the Bethlehem manger Babe, and not a child from 
Herod’s palace; the Galilean peasant, and not a noble¬ 
man of Capernaum; a simple speaker of the truth, 
unordained; a quiet-voiced companion and healer of 
men, not the high priest nor the praetor of Home, was 
this wonder-working Christ who rose from shame to 
glory, from the cross to the crown, from the manger 
to the throne, from the stripes of the soldiers and the 
spittle of the rabble to the hosannas of angels and the 
right hand of God. 

And every new crusade, every unacclaimed reform 
that has come at last to popular approval, has found 
its first supporters and leaders, not among earth’s 
recognised great men and women, but in the study of 
a Calvin, or in the shop of a Socrates, or where some 
village Hampden plies his trade. I do not remember 
now a single character who stands in history like a 
sun among falling stars, who was not a conqueror of 
circumstance, who did not rise in spite of surround¬ 
ings, who was not the master of his environment. 

Paul, whose journeys for the time in which he lived 
and the means of transportation at his disposal, were 
the most adventurous of history as well as the most 
far-reaching missionary tours of his age; Paul, whose 
Christian ministry stands for all time as second only 


Conquerors of Circumstance 115 

to that of Jesus, held, the word of the law and broke 
the bread of life with fingers already callous from the 
needle and cord of a tentmaker. Every mile he trav¬ 
elled was a thrust of torture to his pain-racked body, 
and he was the mightiest orator of the early church 
in spite of his insignificant presence. 

The hand that wrote some of Walter Scott’s rarest 
passages was the hand of a man suffering unutterable 
physical torture. 

Milton, who looked into the future far enough to 
see, and clearly enough to portray, paradise, was blind. 

George Washington, in spite of wealth and family 
distinction, espoused the cause of a humble people, cast 
his lot with a revolution whose failure seemed inevi¬ 
table and whose failure meant the confiscation of 
property and the loss of life. Not all conquerors of 
circumstance are poor, nor are all unknown. Other 
things being equal, undoubtedly it is harder for a man 
of position or a woman of standing to follow principle 
in the espousing of an unpopular cause, than it is for 
a person who has nothing in the way of temporal value 
to lose. 

In 1904 J. Frank Hanly was elected governor of 
Indiana by the largest majority ever received for the 
gubernatorial office in that State. He was the leader 
of his party, and the popular idol of his common¬ 
wealth. No office within the gift of the people seemed 
beyond his reach. During the first year of his term 
his attention was drawn to the saloon’s violations of 
the law; and then, as he attempted to enforce the sta¬ 
tutes in cities where municipal authorities were de¬ 
linquent, he became convinced of the inherent evils 
of the liquor traffic itself. 

He came eventually to believe in absolute prohibi- 


116 


What Men Need Most 


tion. His friends in dismay sought to silence his 
public utterances. They made a determined effort to 
keep his new-found convictions out of his official life. 
Prohibition was most unpopular then, even in the 
Middle West. Among politicians it was tabooed, and 
no man with serious ambitions made the “mistake” of 
allowing the question to creep into his platform. Gov¬ 
ernor Hanly was told, and without the mincing of 
words, that if he had any idea of remaining in public 
life in Indiana, if he hoped ever to realise for himself 
the yet higher ambitions of his friends, he must silence 
his conscience with regard to prohibition. 

Some of us, who knew and loved Governor Hanly 
and who were greatly honoured by having his affec¬ 
tion and confidence, know how bitter, how heart¬ 
breaking, the struggle became, but Governor Hanly 
did not falter. He remained absolutely loyal to his 
convictions, and with flashing eye and burning elo¬ 
quence proclaimed them, first throughout Indiana, and 
then through the length and breadth of the continent. 
He lost the United States senatorship, and perhaps the 
chance to be President of the United States, for some 
of us believe that no man since Lincoln has been in¬ 
herently greater; but he won a glorious immortality. 
When in a terrible accident his life was suddenly cut 
off, he had seen the cause for which he had made su¬ 
preme sacrifices, and to which he had brought con¬ 
tributions perhaps greater than those of any other one 
man, triumphant at the polls and a fact in government. 

But how utterly impossible it is to call the long roll! 
The Lincolns and Grants who came from log cabins 
to the White House; the Napoleons of the land, the 
Nelsons of the sea, who rose from obscurity to hold the 
centre of the world’s stage of war; the poets who like 


Conquerors of Circumstance 117 

Burns walked in poverty while they sang songs for the 
ages; the musicians who have drawn from souls but 
lightly held in bodies gaunt from hunger the sym¬ 
phonies that have ravished the ears of mankind; the 
Frances Willards and the Harriet Beecher Stowes, the 
Clara Bartons and the Florence Nightingales, the 
mother of the Gracchi and the mothers of men whose 
arms were empty from the cradle that they might hold 
the crying children of the world—these, all of these, 
and unnumbered others who with these bore the cross, 
endured the shame, survived the anguish, and took 
their very captivity captive, these were conquerors, 
conquerors of circumstance. 

But the rest of us say, “Ah, yes, so they were, hut 
what of us V ? These were remarkable individuals, 
extraordinary people. To them surroundings were 
never more than the incidental. Favourable circum¬ 
stances or unfavourable, kindly environment or un¬ 
friendly, they became great because they were great, 
because they had greatness within themselves. 

But does not the same principle apply to us all? or 
may it not apply to us all? I remember a one-armed 
lad who played on the sand lots that were the only 
athletic field of our neighbourhood. He set himself 
with unyielding determination to be a football-player, 
and became one of the greatest linemen of his college 
generation. I remember a chubby fellow with the most 
awkward stride and gait in the squad, who became the 
fastest middle-distance runner of his State. At For¬ 
tress Alexandria in Coblenz, just after the armies of 
occupation reached the Khine, I met a Christian En¬ 
deavour boy from San Diego who was an observer with 
the 91st Air-Squadron, and who was wearing the 
D. S. C. The examiners turned him back three times 


118 


What Men Need Most 


because of defective eyesight. He reached the front 
under a mistake in orders, received his chance because 
of a series of disasters that left a division suddenly 
without support in the air; and then because he had 
never given up the idea that somehow, sometime, he 
would be needed, and had prepared himself accord¬ 
ingly, he rendered an imperative and brilliant service 
that pinned a cross upon his breast and kept him flying 
until the armistice was signed. 

A few weeks ago I met a young man in Arizona, a 
“lunger,” who came out of the war with tuberculosis. 
For twelve months he gasped for breath in a sani¬ 
tarium bed in Phoenix; and then, scarcely able to be 
up, he began to go about. Presently he was found in 
a small Santa Fe railroad town, serving a little Metho¬ 
dist church as “supply.” When I became acquainted 
with him, he was preaching to a steadily increasing 
congregation, directing a far from ordinary choir, and 
shepherding a community that had for years been hur¬ 
rying along, not directly or deliberately rejecting, but 
sadly forgetting, God. He blessed me greatly as we 
sat together. His quietly heroic spirit moved my soul; 
and, when I left him, I was a richer man. 

Recently in an Ohio city there died the mother of 
one of my associates in the United Society of Chris¬ 
tian Endeavour. A fatal malady had for months 
slowly worn away her strength; but sweetly.and cheer¬ 
fully, with as fine a heroism as ever went to death, she 
entered the shadows. And she died as she had lived. 
When she was a young mother with six children, the 
eldest fifteen, her husband was called by death, and 
she was left almost penniless. The record of her life 
from that day forth is a chronicle of sacrifices. She 
baked, and sold her loaves. A former school-teacher 


Conquerors of Circumstance 119 

herself, she tutored her children, and prepared them 
for special recital work. As time and strength allowed, 
the little family delighted audiences with their music 
and their speaking. The boys sold papers and handy 
articles, for the home. As they grew older, they 
worked after hours and on Saturdays in the local 
stores. The family was kept together. The baby girl 
died, but the two sisters and three brothers remaining 
grew into beautiful young womanhood and strong 
young manhood, by the side of the wonderful woman 
who never for a moment lost courage or surrendered 
her faith. 

While I lay convalescing from an accident, I re¬ 
ceived a letter from this mother of my friend. It was 
written with her left hand; her right had already be¬ 
come helpless; and it was the joiliest, happiest letter 
that came to me in those days. It was beautifully 
composed, as airy as the song of a bird at the dawn. 

ISTo woman ever worked harder; no woman ever suf¬ 
fered more intensely than she; no woman ever faced 
sterner handicaps; no woman ever kept her heart 
bright und.er greater difficulties. When she closed her 
eyes and folded her worn-out hands in rest, she must 
have been quite satisfied. Two daughters, one the wife 
of a minister, the other the wife of a successful busi¬ 
ness man with whom she spent her last days on earth, 
were by her side. One son, an officer in the World’s 
Christian Endeavour Union, was hurrying to her; 
another in South Africa, and the third a missionary 
on the Uile, were far away, yet clasped in the love 
that made them clean and strong. She was a con¬ 
queror of circumstance. 

Is there an explanation that will help us? What is 
the seoret of this courage ? Where is the hidden 


120 


What Men Need Most 


spring of this life? You will find it in tlie fountain 
that was opened long ago for the healing of the na¬ 
tions. Jesus is speaking to a woman by an ancient 
well; and, if you will listen, you will discover that 
He has a message for you. “Whosoever drinketh of 
this water shall thirst again; hut whosoever drinketh 
of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; 
but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a 
well of water springing up into everlasting life.” 
That glad word, whosoever ” 

Hot captains, and statesmen, and all the earth’s 
brilliant and wise alone, but whosoever , whosoever 
will; may find this hidden spring, may have this ex¬ 
panding, overcoming, conquering spirit within. I have 
seen people far removed from the services of any 
church, deprived of the companionship of Christians, 
shut in by sickness, buried in the wilds of an Indian 
reservation, or surrounded by the rough associations 
of a mining-camp, enjoying the comradeship of this 
great friend, and strengthened by Him to the tasks of 
their humdrum, lonesome lives. Because they had it 
in them! 

Just recently a letter reached me from a young mis¬ 
sionary in China who during the past year has passed 
through many dangers. Referring to an hour of great 
terror he writes: “It is wonderful to feel God’s power 
over the events that without Him would end in our 
hurt. When attacked by bandits on the Canal, and 
later when between bandits and soldiers during a 
pitched battle that effected our escape, I felt God’s 
protection and peace.” 

What is your trouble ? What are the discourage¬ 
ments of your environment? What problems and dif¬ 
ficulties weigh you down ? ruin your health ? bow your 


Conquerors of Circumstance 121 

soul ? You need not tell me. One tiring I know. You 
may be a conqueror of circumstance. You say that 
you have tried, and tried again, and failed? Well, 
better men than we are, and weaker men than we are, 
and men with deeper griefs and difficulties, have tried 
and tried again and failed, and then tried again and 
succeeded. 

You—yes, you —may be a conqueror of circum¬ 
stance. Hear a conqueror testify; one who overcame 
the world; hear the shout of his victory, “I can do all 
things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” 


12 

FROM THE MANGER TO THE THRONE* 

Text: St. Luke 1: 32. “He shall be great, 
and shall be called the Son of the Most High.” 

“And about this time in Bethlehem of Judea was 
born Jesus who truly did many wonder-things.” In 
these words Josephus records the fact of the birth of 
Him whom having not seen we love, whose name is 
above every name, the Saviour of mankind, the Christ 
of God. 

The story of the advent of the Messiah, so long 
looked for, so ardently longed for, is the golden story 
of the ages. Whatever men may say of Him who was 
“the condensation of divinity and the exaltation of 
humanity,” however they may regard His sacrificial 
atonement, to-day they come, as did the wise men 
1900 years ago, and kneel before the manger, and its 
Babe. Twenty years since, I heard a distinguished 
rabbi, now of Hew York City, say, “Jesus! Jesus!— 
whom I love and honour; whom you worship and 
serve.” 

This is the birthday of a King. Ho! this is the 
birthday of the King, King of kings; Lord of lords. 

How did He come ? He came in poverty. His birth- 
chamber was not even a comfortable stall. The ani¬ 
mals of a well-appointed farm are better housed than 

*A Christmas sermon. 

122 


From the Manger to the Throne 123 

was Mary’s Son on His natal morn. For those who 
have seen the stables of the East, the camel-yards and 
sheep-folds, who remember the noisome odours from 
the refuse heaps, there are no delusions in the reverent 
pictures of the masters. The only-begotten son of the 
Father, the Father who holdeth the wealth of the 
worlds in His hands, was muffled in the swaddling 
clothes of poverty by the hands of a virgin who in her 
travail hour was turned from the door of a village 
inn. 

He was born without a complete family record. If 
after twenty centuries there are still those who decry 
His divine parenthood, what of the day in which His 
eyelids fluttered open for the first time? The gospels 
tell us little,—they are suggestively silent. But 
Bethlehem and Hazareth were not celestial villages. 
The clackers clacked and their children pointed fingers 
of scorn. The years that pass add lustre to the name 
of Joseph. Had ever woman truer mate? He was a 
man! But the maiden who replied to the angel of 
annunciation, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord. 
Be it unto me according to thy word,” could not be 
spared the sidelong glances and suggestive smiles, nor 
could the Babe upon her breast. To the multitude 
Jesus was a child of shame. These were the sinister 
twins that stood about the manger crib—poverty and 
shame. Through childhood they companioned Him; 
in all His life they never wandered far from His side; 
for an hour they were lost among the palms, their 
voices drowned by loud hosannas, but quickly they re¬ 
turned to weave His shroud. They left Him at the 
Cross. 

The times were evil when Jesus came. The sword 
arm of Borne hung over the world, and the voice of 


124 


What Men Need Most 


authority was the voice of the soldier. Israel was both 
conquered and decadent; her government was directed 
by strangers who gave a sop to her princes by clothing 
them with an outward appearance of power; their 
religion was a dead formalism cut across by the creeds 
and practices of warring sects; their temple was a 
market-house for gamblers and profiteers, with priests 
the chief offenders; there were no prophets; the faith¬ 
ful were discouraged and leaderless. When Jesus 
came Jerusalem was a tomb of departed glory. 

But from the manger Jesus journeyed to His 
throne; up from the poverty of Bethlehem and through 
the shame of Nazareth, He came to rule the world. 
His quiet voice Was mightier than the battle shout of 
Borne, and those who saw Him smile forgot that they 
were slaves. 

He was born a King. The wise men from the East 
who came with gifts to kneel before His humble bed, 
the shepherds who heard the angels sing and ran to 
greet Him in the silent night, found not the son of 
Joseph but the Son of God. Hid we say from the 
manger to the throne? Ah, the manger was a throne. 
A steep, long road he travelled to His crown, but al¬ 
ways He was king,—-king because He was, and king 
because He was kingly. In others we discover flaws 
and love them none the less,—in Him we find no fault 
at all. He was the perfect man who was and is very 
God. 

Jesus was the supreme demonstration of character. 
He was a monarch not because of earthly circumstance, 
rather in spite of it, and in the final analysis not be¬ 
cause of blood. He had within Himself the power to 
be, or not to be; He could have overthrown the plan 


From the Manger to the Throne 125 

of His Heavenly Father and by silence as well as by 
refusal; but in appalling physical and mental hard¬ 
ships, in evil report and through misunderstandings 
that broke His heart,—misunderstandings that brought 
home to Him the stern realisation that He would be 
rejected of men because they would be unwilling to 
accept Him for what He was, and for what He had to 
offer,—He was true to Himself and to His mission; 
He kept the faith. The truth is for us all. 

He may have toiled with grimy hands 
And shoulders bowed with care, 

Yet been a King! 

He may have laboured through long years 
Of battling want and grim despair, 

Yet been a King! 

He may have died in grief alone, 

Unwept, unhonoured and unknown, 

Yet been a King! 

Men did not think that they had rejected the king¬ 
dom and their Messiah, when they finally denied Jesus, 
but they would have nothing to do with the kind of 
kingdom they came at last to see He had for them. 
They had thought too long in terms of gilded vessels 
and burnished trappings. They had read history at 
the expense of prophecy. They knew Saul and David 
better than they knew Isaiah. They were wiser in 
politics and trade than they were in religion. Their 
eyes were blinded so that when their great day dawned 
they did not recognise it. 

Ah, what a tragedy! To suffer as Israel suffered 
and then to refuse the healing; to wait as Israel waited 
and then to lose the glory. And on every Christmas 


126 


What Men Need Most 


Day we face the danger that proved too great a menace 
for the Jew. We, too, wait on temporal power and 
put our trust in royal purple. We, too, think in terms 
of gains, and ask the price of gifts. We, too, seek the 
higher seats and scheme for place. Again the rabble 
cries, Crucify! Crucify! 

But He is King. Let no note of pessimism domi¬ 
nate this day. And His kingdom of the spirit has 
wider sway than ever before. When we think of the 
principles He preached nearly two thousand years 
ago,—think of them in the abstract and apart from 
their historical associations, we feel like joining our¬ 
selves to the discouraged prophet, but when we study 
society now as related to society then, we find reason 
to take heart. More and more Jesus has captured the 
imaginations of men; more and more as their own 
efforts have failed they have turned to Him. More 
and more they have inclined to accept His idealism, 
as the standard for living; more and more they have 
come to agree that He is for time, as well asffor eter¬ 
nity,—the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

He is King of kings, and His Kingdom is at hand. 
Slowly, but steadily and irresistibly, that which the 
disciples preached, even though they did not fully 
understand it, is coming into existence. The destruc¬ 
tion of piracy and slavery; the overthrow of the pri¬ 
vate feud; the outlawing of the liquor traffic and the 
traffic in girls; the emancipation of women; the con¬ 
servation of childhood; the serious discussion of dis¬ 
armament; the new diplomacy in International Rela¬ 
tions; and the higher conception of the responsibility 
of the strong for the weak,—are steps of progress in 
the way that Jesus opened long ago for the healing of 
the nations. 


From the Manger to the Throne 127 

THUS HIS KINGDOM COMES 


Armies marching to and fro; 

Clank of steel and crash of blow; 
Brother laying brother low,— 

This the setting long ago, 

When the Prince of Peace was born. 

Armies marching to and fro; 

Clank of steel and crash of blow, 
Brother laying brother low,— 

Setting now as long ago, 

For the Holy Christmas Morn. 

Peasantry with naked feet, 

Children starving in the street, 

Plenty in the manor seat, 

Lust and squalor,—these to greet, 

When the manger held a King. 

Peasantry with naked feet, 

Children starving in the street, 

Plenty in the manor seat, 

Lust and squalor,—still to greet, 

As the Christ Child carols ring. 

But His blood cried from the ground, 
From Golgotha’s reeking mound,— 

For the world’s great open wound, 

Thus the triumph way was found 
For the nations long ago. 

And the road is still the same; 

By the cross and by the flame, 

Truth prevails o’er wrong and shame, 
Who Will Follow in His Train? 

Thus His Kingdom comes below. 


128 


What Men Need Most 


Jesus:—this King who journeyed from the manger 
to the throne, is King of kings because He is monarch 
of the soul. He commands the spirit. Here His 
empire has its sway. He healed the sick; He raised 
the dead, and now His boundary lines are marked by 
hospitals and held by surgeons, but His Kingdom is 
not of this world. His Kingdom is in this world and 
over it, and He shall reign “where’er the sun does 
his successive journeys run,” because He rules the 
heart. 

To-day with far-visioning hopes we plan disarma¬ 
ment where yesterday we poisoned men with gas and 
slew the sons of men until their blood ran down the 
earth, and every hope that sees a star is set to the 
music that was heard first by shepherds on Judea’s 
hills when angels sang, “Peace on earth, goodwill to 
men.” War can change national boundaries and hate 
can level cities and destroy nations, but only God can 
build a new earth, for God alone can make new crea¬ 
tures out of men. 

Perhaps this is the message that we need to-day as 
we need no other. Are we trusting too much in our¬ 
selves, in our statesmanship, in our culture, in our 
traditions, in our wisdom, in our temporal advantages 
and natural resources? Let us not forget that every¬ 
thing this generation has, as compared with its prob¬ 
lems and dangers, every other generation has had. 
Athens was not less cultured than Paris; Rome was 
as mighty as Washington! 

His Kingdom is spiritual and it is love,—the love 
that casteth out fear; the love that gathers little chil¬ 
dren to its breast and blesses them; the love that 
seeketh not her own; the love that beareth all things; 
the love that is greater than faith, mightier than hope 


From the Manger to the Throne 129 

and that never faileth. This love is to-day the most 
potent, power, the most practical thing in the world. 
For a state it is a greater protection than a grand 
fleet; in business it is infinitely more effective than 
espionage and undercover methods; interracially it 
has the only prophecy of peace. Love thy neighbour 
as thyself, is the Magna Charta of human brotherhood, 
and only as its principle is applied will men be secure 
in person and purse, will industry be humanised, and 
swords beaten into ploughshares. 

But what think you of Christ? That is the ques¬ 
tion. And what does Christmas mean to you ? There 
is a wonderful story told of a woman taken in adul¬ 
tery who was brought to Jesus. Reading the minds 
of her accusers, and knowing their hypocrisy, he said, 
“Let him that is without fault cast the first stone,” 
and while one by one until all had gone they stole 
silently away, He wrote in the sand. Then to the un¬ 
fortunate sister of all who have sinned, as she sinned, 
He spoke the great emancipation, “Go and sin no 
more.” Hot stones, but salvation is His remedy for 
fallen women, and for fallen men. Every home for 
unfortunates, every rescue mission, is an outpost of 
His Kingdom, and that which prisons and guillotines 
have failed to do, His grace is all-sufficient for. He 
touches the hidden springs of life. He brings forward 
the best; He is the captain of the soul and when He 
speaks and when I hear and follow Him, though dead 
in trespasses and sins, I pass from death to life. 

It is here that the Christian religion, when com¬ 
pared with all other faiths, is unique and stands su¬ 
preme. “What can wash away my sin ?” has been the 
agonising cry of man since Adam fell. “What can 
make me whole again?” And the only answer that 


130 


What Men Need Most 


has ever satisfied, is the answer that comes from Cal¬ 
vary, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” There are 
some things that I can do to right the wrongs that I 
have done, but I cannot forgive myself, nor can I buy 
forgiveness for you do not have it; nor can I earn 
it,—it is the gift of God. 

To-day we acclaim the world’s greatest conqueror 
and He is not among the mighty captains who over¬ 
threw strong cities and compassed far seas to enslave 
strange peoples. Nor is He numbered with the wise 
who made great discoveries, who bridged vast spaces 
and brought the lightnings down to drive the wheels 
of trade. Greater things than these fall from His 
hand like snowflakes from a winter cloud, for when 
He promised Paradise to a thief who hung beside Him 
on a cross, and when He cleansed the woman of her 
shame, He did the greater things than these. 

This is the day of Gifts,—the day of joy and sing¬ 
ing, the children’s day. 

Glad I am for dear old Christmas, 

Time of singing, time of joy, 

Glad I am that once I lived it, 

Just a tousle-headed boy. 

Glad I am to know the crossing 
In the sullen tide between 
Hither banks that fade and tarnish 
And the fields of living green. 

For the miles that are so many 
’Twixt me here and those I love, 

Will be nothing when we gather 
In the Father’s house above. 


From the Manger to the Throne 131 

And I think, ah, yes, ’tis knowledge, 

I shall know as I am known, 

When I celebrate first Christmas 
With the family ’round the Throne. 

This is the day of Gifts. You gave a doll to-day and 
heard your daughter’s cry of pure delight. Your son, 
your wife, your friend, the ones that you love best, 
took from your hands the treasures that however poor 
they may have been were rich as ropes of pearls because 
you found them in your heart. 

This is the day of Gifts, and at its close we bring 
to you the greatest gift of all, the gift of peace,—the 
peace that passeth understanding,—the peace of sins 
forgiven,—the gift of love. I bring to you this great¬ 
est gift of all,—it is not mine, it is the Gift of God, 
for God is love, and “He so loved the world that He 
gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on 
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 


13 


WE FINISH TO BEGIN* 

Text: St. John 19:30. “It is finished 

“We finish to begin.” Always we stand in an exit 
and at an entrance. Forever one year is behind us; 
another is before us. 

“We finish to begin,” but what does it mean ? 
The blotters in the various police courts of the great 
cities show the record of crimes committed hy outlaws 
who prey upon their fellows; the morning press re¬ 
cords deeds of violence perpetrated upon society by 
evil-doers who finish one year of sin but to begin 
another. And, as the thug upon his way to robbery 
and murder heard the bells chime the New Year, his 
actions spoke louder than words, “I finish to begin.” 

The labouring man who skimps his work, who gives 
less than an honest day for his wage, who as a leader 
fastens upon his fellows ridiculous rules and regula¬ 
tions, with a system of inexcusable fines that place a 
premium upon inefficiency if not sabotage, who talks 
about society as owing him something when he is in 
reality earning little or nothing, who in thinking and 
acting for himself forgets or despises the general pub¬ 
lic, which has been long-suffering, but which has suf¬ 
fered too long already, finishes only to begin. Will 
this slacker worker continue to misrepresent the great 

* A New Year’s sermon. 

132 



133 


We Finish to Begin 

body of bis fellows, prejudicing their honest cause, 
robbing them of the sympathy they need and should 
have ? Will he continue to play into the hands of those 
he seeks to destroy, not only rendering hopeless his 
own ill-advised programme, but thwarting the pur¬ 
poses of the wise and patriotic leaders who seek to 
safeguard the rights of the toiler and to win for him 
a larger place in the industrial and social order? He 
has finished and he will begin, but has he finished io 
begin? 

The employer who turned grimly from the war, say¬ 
ing, “How that we have won, we must quickly get back 
to business as usual”; the employer who failed to 
realise that things would never again be as they had 
been, who was surprised and indignant because for¬ 
eign-born peoples who had been called “Americans 
All!” when disaster was threatening the Allies, re¬ 
sented in bitterness being treated like “hunkies and 
Polacks and dagoes” after the armistice was signed, 
who refused conferences, who denied collective bar¬ 
gaining, who shut the door in the face of chosen rep¬ 
resentatives of his workers, who employed under-cover 
men—spies, who found an ever-ready weapon in the 
lie, and who did not stop at murder,—this employer 
has finished, too. 

What is in his mind as he faces the future? Has 
he learned anything from the International Harvester 
Company’s demonstration of the participation of la¬ 
bour in the control of industry ?—a demonstration 
that recently and for the first time in history revealed 
workers by their own votes reducing their own pay, 
when the business was found unable to maintain the 
higher wage? Has he heard of the shop committee in 
such institutions as the Colorado Fuel and Iron Com- 


134 


What Men Need Most 

pany of the Kockefellers ? Does he know anything 
about the results that have come to great department 
stores through profit-sharing with employes? Has he 
an open mind and a new heart? Has the worker, has 
the employer, an open mind and a new heart? They 
have finished, and they will begin; but have they 
finished to begin ? 

There are business men who during the financial 
stress and strain of the immediate past drifted out of 
the lives of their sons and daughters. Foolish indeed 
should I be carelessly to censure them. They may 
have faced the spectre of financial disaster and gone 
to death-grips with bankruptcy. Hot all of them by 
any means have made a deliberate choice between 
honour and business. Hor have all of them been car¬ 
ried away by the passion for success as measured by 
gold. But what they have lost, not all the gold of 
Midas could restore; and what their children are 
losing, no accountant will ever be able to compute. 

One afternoon while fishing in a small tributary of 
the Siletz Biver in the Pacific Northwest, I came upon 
a jam of driftwood that partially dammed the mouth 
of a yet smaller creek that rushed down a canon of the 
coast mountains. Among the logs and branches I 
found several fine specimens of fresh beaver cuts, and, 
hoping to discover a beaver colony not far away, I 
unjointed my rod, cached my pack, and followed up 
the ravine. The beavers were more distant than I 
expected; indeed, I never reached them, but I did find 
something vastly more interesting. Where the canon 
widened into a tiny valley, I came upon a cabin. The 
great firs had been cut away, and the log house with 
its sheds and barn was set in the middle of a two-acre 
clearing. 



135 


We Finish to Begin 

Now there were many cabins in those mountains, 
the cabins of timber-cruisers and of men and women 
who were proving up on timber claims. But the fruit- 
trees and garden and tiny flower-yard, and the morn¬ 
ing-glories climbing over a trellis, placed this “wee 
hoose” in a class by itself. A man was hoeing corn 
in the field, and a bareheaded little girl was following 
behind him. We greeted each other and talked for 
an hour. We had not spoken two words, indeed, he 
had not passed beyond the smile of welcome, until I 
knew him for what he was,—an educated and a cul¬ 
tured gentleman. An older girl, nine, perhaps, joined 
us while we talked. Mentally I commented upon the 
absence of the mother. 

We discussed politics—it was August, 1900, the 
year of McKinley’s re-election. I found him thor¬ 
oughly acquainted with the issues of the campaign. 
He knew the beavers, too, and took me into one of the 
most attractive living rooms I have ever seen, to look 
at the skins he had gathered, skins of muskrats and 
lynx as well as of beaver. There was a “baby organ” 
in one corner of the room; music and books,—good 
books,—magazines, and pictures were everywhere. 
One of the pictures, I remember, was Hoffmann’s 
“Boy Christ”; another was “The Landing of the Pil¬ 
grims”; and over the mantle hung an exquisite paint¬ 
ing of a young and beautiful woman. We talked for 
an hour, and then I hurried away. He had not spoken 
of himself, and of course I had not asked any personal 
questions; but later I learned his story. 

He was a successful young business man, the son and 
heir of a wealthy manufacturer, happily married, and 
with two little daughters, when his wife suddenly died. 
After struggling along for a year he startled and 



136 


What Men Need Most 


amazed his Eastern associates by quietly announcing 
that he had purchased an unimproved quarter-section 
of timber-land in the Northwest, and that he was with¬ 
drawing from all business responsibilities to move 
into the wilds to spend five years with his daughters. 
He was not bitter. He simply decided that to remain 
where he was meant inevitably the loss of the greatest 
joy of his fatherhood. He believed that for five years 
he could give to his little girls every vital thing that 
they needed, that at the end of that time they would be 
ready to return, go on with their studies, and enter 
the normal life of his people. 

Financially he was in a position to do as he wished. 
Certain ambitions were of course sacrificed; but de¬ 
liberately he made the choice, and to-day he does not 
regret it. He lived in the remote mountains a year 
longer than he had originally planned to stay. Now 
and then relatives of the children visited them, and 
two or three times every year the little girls went out 
with their father for supplies; that was all. He was 
their tutor and their guide, their housekeeper, their 
playmate, their father, and, with the help of the pic¬ 
ture, their mother. No women in all this world have 
richer, sweeter memories of their childhood than the 
two little girls I saw for the first and last time more 
than twenty years ago in the Oregon mountains. 

Fathers and mothers, we have finished with the old 
year; what of the new? We cannot go to the 'wilds 
with our children, but we can come out of the wilder¬ 
ness of society and business in which they have lost 
us. We finish to-night. Oh, let us begin. 

Internationally the old year has been a year of old 
wounds reopened and bled afresh. Would to God the 
nations with a mighty and united voice might say, 


137 


We Finish to Begin 

“We finish; we finish, and we finish to begin!” We 
finish a year of suspicion and war, a year of planning 
and building and wasting against future wars, a year 
of impoverishment and famine. We finish, and we 
finish to begin; to begin a new year; a year of peace; 
a year of disarmament; a year in which battle-fleets 
shall be dismantled, fortifications scrapped, and armies 
disbanded; a year in which the vast energies of civili¬ 
sation shall be mobilised against hunger, disease, and 
poverty; a year of war, but a year of war for man and 
not against him; and God pity the nation or the na¬ 
tions that block the road of hope up which civilisation 
struggles in a bloody sweat. 

One Sunday evening in the spring of 1921 a 
young man came into a great New York church, 
drenched to the skin, sadly under the influence of 
liquor, a wreck in body and in mind. The story is the 
old one, in which an invalid mother, a broken-hearted 
father, a wife and babies and a ruined career are 
mixed with the tears of grief and churned by the ladle 
of sin. The church did the best that it could for him, 
but I have been thinking of him to-day, and wonder¬ 
ing what he is saying to-night. I have been thinking 
about him because there are so many of him in every 
city. What is he saying? God help him to say, “I 
finish; I finish, and, trusting in Christ for strength, 
I finish to begin, finish to begin a new life.” 

Ten years ago I watched the old year out in the 
Pacific Garden Mission, Chicago, the mission that cap¬ 
tured “Mel” Trotter and Harry Monroe and Billy 
Sunday and thousands of others for God. It was home¬ 
coming night; the room was crowded; there were men 
and women present from all sections of the country. 
As is always the case in such a service, the testimonies 


138 


What Men Need Most 


of the converts were the most gripping portion of the 
programme. One of the speakers, a man in middle 
life, said that years before on a New Year’s night he 
had staggered down the aisle of that old hall and fallen 
in a half-stupor across its altar-rail; that somehow 
God had saved him there, given him a new heart, a 
new life, and that in the early hours of a New Year’s 
morning he had walked through the doors of that mis¬ 
sion a new man in Christ Jesus. He told how he had 
returned to his wife, and how together they had rebuilt 
their broken home. He concluded by saying, “To¬ 
night, by the grace of God, I am a respected citizen 
of my city, president of a bank, and father of a Chris¬ 
tian family.” He had finished one year, and he had 
finished it to begin another. 

Few of us find anything in our experience that 
brings us to common ground with this man; you were 
never on the street, sodden in a vice, the victim of an 
evil appetite; or perhaps you were. But there is no 
one who does not have temptations and problems and 
weaknesses, who does not look back upon an old year 
that has in it something that, when we are honest with 
ourselves, we wish had never been. Thank God, you 
have finished the old year, and thank God that you 
may finish to begin a new year. 

Ah, sad it would be if we but finished, if there were 
no new year to begin! What you have written you 
have written, but you have not written all. The page 
is full, but the book is not completed; turn the page! 
turn the page to-night! 

Has the year been disastrous to your plans, or has 
it brushed the hand of death across your brow? Has 
it witnessed the wrecking of cherished ambitions or 
the loss of trusted friends? Has it overwhelmed you 




139 


We Finish to Begin 

with physical pain and mental anguish? Well, the 
year is finished, and all of these are tragedies of the 
past. Begin again! 

Or has the old year brought joy and peace to your 
door? Has it carried for you “apples of gold in pic¬ 
tures of silver ’ 7 ? Ah, then you are ready with sing¬ 
ing lips and shouting soul to begin a new. 

The old is gone, gone beyond recall, gone forever. 
But for the new the tide has just begun to turn. We 
begin! 

Then what of this beginning ? How shall we begin ? 
Merchants are making inventories and taking account 
of stock, and we are planning in a more or less definite 
way our programme of work and of pleasure for an¬ 
other year. But, as we look back, how futile it all 
appears! We do our best; we honour our clearest 
judgments, and we should; but how utterly impossible 
it is to anticipate the happenings of a year! In three 
hundred and sixty-five days 

“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men 
Gang aft agley.” 

There is absolutely nothing that we can do to assure 
ourselves health, success, and happiness. The new 
year is for all of us a land of mystery with many a 
river of doubt and many an unmarked crossing. We 
may win and we may lose. We may greet our ships 
as heavy-laden they return from distant seas, or we may 
wait for them in vain. We may live, and we may not. 
We may hold the home lines firmly, or death may 
break through our last defences and leave a smoulder¬ 
ing ruin in our heart. We do not make the weather, 
and we are seldom good prophets. There will be 


140 


What Men Need Most 


winter and there will be summer, but who shall tell us 
truly, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind V 7 

We are at the beginning; but the end, and even the 
next step, is hidden from us. The pathway we travel 
unfolds as a road through the deep forests and sunny 
open places of an ever-changing country. We are be¬ 
ginning a journey to-night, a journey that calls for a 
guide; for with what I know of the old year, I do not 
care to enter the new alone. There are those by my 
side who went with me to the gates of death and back 
again, but neither they nor I would care to face the 
future without God. To-night it is for me, and I hope 
for you, the beginning, and “in the beginning, God. 7 ’ 
He knows this way. He is master of its mysteries; 
to Him it has no terrors; and I am safe when by His 
side. 

We finish to begin. I am glad. We may not know, 
but we do hope, hope with the hope that springs eternal 
in the human breast, hope with the hope that sends 
men and women forth with radiant faith to dare the 
great adventure. We are at the beginning, and we are 
glad, glad, to have lived, glad to be alive. 



14 

THE LIGHT THAT HAS NEVER FAILED 


Text: St. John 8:12. “I am the light of the 
world: he that followeth me shall not walk in 
the darkness, hut shall have the light of life” 

In the Old Testament there is a very wonderful 
story of a lamp with an unfailing light in it, a perfect 
picture of the Bible’s relation to Jesus Christ. The 
“Book of books” contains Him, and He is the light of 
the world. Through the Bible’s brightly burnished 
lenses He shines. Its divinely inspired pages reveal 
Him. In it we see Jesus, and following its admoni¬ 
tions we follow the Christ. 

Some men profess to find a contradiction between 
the emphatic statement of the Hew Testament, “I am 
the light of the world,” and the equally emphatic dec¬ 
laration, “Ye are the light of the world.” There is no 
contradiction. We are the light of the world only be¬ 
cause He is the light of the world, and because He, 
being in us, shines out through us. 

How perfectly this marvellous relationship between 
the human and the divine was portrayed when at the 
healing of a blind man the Great Physician said, “As 
long as I am in the world, I am the light of the 
world.” I can almost hear Him continue: “And after 
I return to the Father I must particularly rely upon 
you. Then ye are the light of the world.” 


142 


What Men Need Most 

It is no mean thing to be a Christian. To he a 
Christian is a terrible responsibility. A failing beacon 
on Cape Cod means a clipper in the shoals. A Chris¬ 
tian going astray often has led another life to ship¬ 
wreck. But do you hesitate ? Do you refuse to become 
a Christian because of the responsibility? It is use¬ 
less for you to do so, for you escape nothing; the re¬ 
sponsibility remains, but by your own choice you are 
a lamp unfilled and unburning. To hopeless people 
about you, struggling in darkness, you deliberately 
deny the gleam that might save them from paths of 
pain, from pitfalls of disaster. 

The only complete failure is the failure of the man 
who refuses to try. And how glorious a thing it is to 
try, to do your level best, to face temptation and re¬ 
sponsibility ! How glorious a thing it is to dare all, 
trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for strength! 

Ah! there is the difference! I cannot fail if I am 
true; for He is the light, I am the light-keeper. 
Mine to keep the lenses burnished and the vessel filled; 
His, to shine. When I refuse, I refuse the light, and 
I deny the light to those who would see it if I but 
released it. Prom the standpoint of responsibility it 
is a fearful thing to he a Christian, but it is an in¬ 
finitely more terrible thing to refuse to be one. 

Did I say that it is a fearful thing to be a Chris¬ 
tian? Yes, because immortal souls rest upon us their 
destiny to a degree beyond our comprehending. But 
it is equally true that it is the only thing that casteth 
out fear; the burden of responsibility becomes a burden 
of joy, and fear is lost in faith. 

The only man who has a right to confidence is the 
man who walks with Christ, for he and he only walks 
in the light. This is the light “that lighteth every 


The Light That Has Never Failed 143 

man.” Put your trust in no other. Be satisfied with 
no substitute, and allow no false or superficial counsel 
to start you in the wrong direction. A few years ago 
a student in the senior class of a great State univer¬ 
sity came into my office, and discussed with me his 
after-college career. He had two splendid offers; 
they appeared to be equally attractive. He was dis¬ 
turbed and uncertain; several times in the course of 
the conversation he said, “Oh, it would be easy enough 
if I had only one of them.” 

Before he left I slipped the bolt in the door of the 
inner office, and, kneeling by the table, we prayed to¬ 
gether for light, more light. I saw him again after 
Commencement and there was no uncertainty in the 
smile with which he said, “I’ve settled it, and it’s all 
right.” “How did you do it?” I questioned. There 
was the suggestion of surprise in his tone as he an¬ 
swered, “I prayed through.” 

I do not know what darkness of doubt or uncer¬ 
tainty or grief or disappointment may surround you; 
but I do know that Jesus is the light, that He will 
make plain the way for you; that, if you will but look, 
you may live. Friends advise us and cheer. Friends 
comfort and strengthen us; but the best advice ever 
given me by a friend was the advice to put my trust, 
my faith, my life, my all, in Jesus Christ. 

“O Light, that followest all my way, 

I yield my flickering torch to Thee; 

My heart restores its borrowed ray, 

That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day 
May brighter, fairer be.” 

Down in Wall Street, in front of the old Sub¬ 
treasury building, is the bas-relief of a man kneeling 


144 


What Men Need Most 


in prayer. His time was one of fear and darkness. 
The cause to which he had dedicated his life, for 
which he had already led brave men to death, and in 
which rested now the hopes of freedom for all the 
years, was sinking fast into the night of irretrievable 
disaster. Burdens too heavy to be borne rested upon 
his shoulders; appalling responsibilities overwhelmed 
his soul. 

But he did not resign; he did not withdraw. For 
a moment he did not go forward. It was very dark. 
The way had eluded him; and so he stopped, and 
looked up, and set his course again by the great Light. 

That vast company of men and women who believe 
in the God of Washington are fully persuaded that the 
hope for every disarmament conference, faced as they 
are by problems of age-old antipathies and jealousies, 
and beset by traditions, is not in the wisdom of states¬ 
men, not in the counsel of experts, but in the Light, 
that great Light that showed George Washington the 
way from Valley Forge to Yorktown, and that guided 
Abraham Lincoln from Gettysburg to Appomattox. It 
is to nations as well as to individuals that He speaks 
when He says, 

“I am the light of the world; he that followeth me 
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of 
life.” 


15 

THE CALL OF THE NEW CRUSADE 


Text: II Timothy 2: 3. “Thou therefore en¬ 
dure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus 
Christr 

It was an evening in early February, 1918. I stood 
with Canon Braithwaite under the high arched roof 
of Winchester Cathedral, in the city of Britain’s early 
kings. The venerable clergyman lifted his torch, and 
flung its beams among the mighty columns of the 
ancient church. For nearly half a century it has been 
his sacred charge. 

Choir-boys were at practice in an adjoining room. 
Their song floated to us across the twilight, and in my 
fancy became the voices of the sculptured figures that 
seemed to leave their places in the niches of the walls 
and to stand about us in the air. 

Then the Canon spoke: “On the Norman tiles where 
you stand to-night, Crusaders knelt to receive their last 
communion. From this holy place they went forth to 
cross the Channel and take up their long journey 
toward the sepulchre of Christ.” 

In a few days I had crossed the Channel; a few 
days more and I had seen the small but rapidly grow¬ 
ing army of my country marching up the battle-roads 
of France, entering communicating trenches to take 
position in the line that stood between Metz and Toul, 

in the shadow of Mount Sec. 

145 



146 


What Men Need Most 

And as the lads in khaki, who had come so far to 
give so much, took up the great advance, I cried: 
“These are crusaders, too! These are the knights of 
the twentieth century, defenders of the faith, path¬ 
finders of the new era, the era that, please God, shall 
be the Era of the Soul!’ 7 

Eow, all crusades have three things in common: 
first, a holy cause; second, a vast company of youth; 
third, a great consecration. 

Every crusade has demonstrated the consecration of 
a vast company of youth to a holy cause. The supreme 
ordeal of our tragic past has been no exception to the 
rule. Eor what a cause our brothers and our sons 
went forth to break their lances upon the distant fields 
of Europe! They journeyed for the rights of the 
helpless and as defenders of the weak. They rode to 
crush the iron hand of militarism and to end the sway 
of kings. They dared and died to vindicate the might 
of right. 

Granted that every great mass movement that has 
led civilisation forward has suffered from false leaders, 
selfish and traitorous chiefs; granted that it has been 
an easy cloak to hide the ulterior motives of the baser 
sort; but always, in the large, it has been unselfish and 
worthy; and in the end it has prevailed because it has 
possessed the omnipotence of truth. 

To-day we are still perfecting the physical census of 
our blood-letting; we are counting our wounded and 
our dead. What do we find? Millions of young men 
marching up from the South and down from the 
North, out of the East and the West. Millions of 
young men training and battling and dying. Millions 
of young men maimed. Millions of young men dead. 

Once again the record has shown that middle life 



The Call of the New Crusade 147 

and old age do not bear the physical burden of armed 
conflict. The World War stands as a stupendous spec¬ 
tacle of youth, a spectacle of youth in a consecration 
of limb and life and soul, the like of which the eyes 
of the world had never before seen, but a consecration 
that, while it began with those who faced the battle’s 
hardness under the flares of No Man’s Land, in burn¬ 
ing sky and upon sinister sea, did not end with them. 

To these were joined in a consecration as vital as 
theirs, the mothers and fathers and wives and sisters 
and brothers who brought the men who fought as price¬ 
less offerings to the altars of freedom; and who, turn¬ 
ing not away, held them to their tasks in fidelity of 
purpose and with unselfishness of service and sacri¬ 
fice. 

And when the war-clouds that even yet hang above 
us have all cleared away, this great consecration will 
remain as the chief compensation for the struggle. 
The world has learned to suffer and to give on a scale 
never before practised or realised; she has learned to 
suffer and give all. 

Upon us, who were not called upon to surrender 
life rests a very grave responsibility. If we are to be 
worthy of the dead who withheld nothing, and if we 
are to finish the “sacred task undone,” then we must 
make their consecration secure and permanent. It 
will be a tragedy beyond comprehension if the spiritual 
values established by that colossal struggle are lost or 
obscured. To ever return to pre-war attitudes and 
relationships, to ever take up again the mad race for 
gold and gain and arrogant national power, to think 
once more in terms of selfish individualism, aloof na¬ 
tionalism and narrow sectarianism, will be to strike 
with palsy the arm we lifted for international right- 


148 


What Men Need Most 


eousness, will be to invalidate tbe world’s investment 
of blood and treasure. And it is here that America 
is tempted as is no other land. 

How shall we hold the great consecration ? Let there 
be no evasion of the question. Only by a new crusade. 
Ho mean or small thing will attract those who were 
joined to the death-grapple of the bloody past. True, 
some have found and will follow the line of least re¬ 
sistance; others will loll on in ease and idleness; but 
the vast company is impatient with soft words, for 
their souls have been elemental harps upon which the 
fingers of Late have struck the chords of vast and 
vicarious sacrifice. 

A young lieutenant in a letter to his father, written 
from France shortly after the signing of the armistice, 
said, “I have learned one thing, father; having given 
my life to my country, I can never take my life back 
again.” 

William I. Grundish, a private of the engineers, 
wrote in the trenches, “Facing the Shadows.” It is 
a classic that will live beyond the brief span of the 
man who penned it. 

“When I behold the tense and tragic night 

Shrouding the earth in vague, symbolic gloom; 
And when I think that ere my fancy’s flight 
Has reached the portals of the inner room 
Where knightly ghosts, guarding the secret ark 
Of brave romance, through me shall sing again, 
Death may ingulf me in eternal dark; 

Still I have no regret nor poignant pain. 

Better in one ecstatic, epic day 

To strike a blow for glory and for truth, 

With ardent, singing heart to toss away 
In Freedom’s cause my eager youth, 


The Call of the New Crusade 149 

Than bear, as weary years pass one by one, 

The knowledge of a sacred task undone.” 

To such as these we must address ourselves, to such 
as these the Church must speak, for into the hands of 
such as these the programmes of society are now 
intrusted. 

What is the new crusade, the great crusade, that 
shall hold from age to age in high and steadfast con¬ 
secration the world’s vast company of youth? It is 
industrial and social, political and religious, all of 
these in one. For us to advance in divisions, for us 
to go forward in separation, even though we move in 
parallel lines, will be to fail. Society can vitalise only 
one crusade at a time. For the present crisis, so chal¬ 
lenging to all the worthy passions of the aroused hu¬ 
man heart, there must be essential unity in spirit and 
in action. And in what shall we find our unity? 

Economically we stand in violent divisions. At one 
extreme men have been saying, “The war is over. We 
must hurry back to old conditions —master and man. 
The concessions made by capital in order that a united 
front be presented to the common foe are no longer 
necessary. We have been too long in re-establishing 
the old order.” 

At the other extreme the violent voice of the wilder¬ 
ness cries without ceasing: “The millennium has come 
to Eussia. Let us enter in.” 

Never are we going back to old conditions. Never 
again will it be master and man. The worker has 
learned his human values. He has eaten of the fruit 
of the tree of knowledge. He has become wise. Up 
from the mines and out of the factories he came to 
join the universal brotherhood of labour and suffering. 


150 


What Men Need Most 

He knew the hand of the skilled surgeon; he felt the 
touch of the trained nurse. He found himself to be 
the first essential in all orderly and constructive proc¬ 
esses of civilisation. 

Everywhere he is saying and will say words like 
these, words that I heard first in the Lamb House, 
London, early in 1918, “Never again will we consent 
to the holding of millions of acres of land in the hands 
of the unproducing few, while we have no bit of 
ground under God’s free sky.” 

No, it will be master and man never again! 

What of Russia, Russia betrayed and crucified ? We 
will not be deceived. She has not found the mil¬ 
lennium. But let the judgments we bring upon her now 
be tempered by the knowledge of the reasons for her 
plight. Her children suffer for the sins of their 
fathers. She is in the grip of the inexorable law of 
compensation. She reaps where she sowed, and it is 
the irony of fate that the harvesting hands must be 
slashed by sword-grass they did not plant. 

We will not be deceived, but we shall be fools in¬ 
deed if we refuse to learn the lessons Russia teaches. 
Only by fidelity to the principles that made us a nation, 
that established us first in freedom and then in unity; 
only by continued loyalty to the rich guaranties of the 
Constitution, and by being willing to interpret these 
guaranties so as to meet the needs of the new times 
upon which we have come, shall we avoid disaster. 

The hour is one of expression and not of repression. 
Let no sudden panic tempt us to deny the faith in 
which we have thus far prevailed. Give Liberty her 
eyes and her voice, and she will find her way. Bind 
her, and blind her, and she will go mad. 

No, we will not follow the terror of the Steppes; 


The Call of the New Crusade 151 

but bow shall we discover the high ground that stands 
between the quicksands of the two extremes? 

And bow shall we find the spirit with which to 
address ourselves to the as yet unsolved racial prob¬ 
lems of our times, problems that have grown in a gen¬ 
eration from snapping curs to sinister monsters, prob¬ 
lems that threaten our domestic safety as well as the 
peacefulness of our international relationships? 

Statesmanship has no answer. The whole political 
horizon is black with threatening clouds of prejudice 
and misunderstanding. Are we to approach these mo¬ 
mentous matters in a spirit of selfish partisanship? 
To be Republicans or Democrats, to be less than Ameri¬ 
cans, now is to be incompetent; and to save America 
we must serve the world . 

There is no answer for the question of society in the 
schoolroom of economics alone. Industrial reform is 
inadequate, and until civilisation shall find the grace 
to love the unlovable she will continue to fill her streets 
with lynchers and her seas with fleets of suspicion. 

God pity the world if we go forward now in an in¬ 
dustrial crusade and a social crusade and a political 
crusade; God pity the world if we move forward 
divided! 

There is room and time and strength for only one 
great forward movement. It must be industrial, social, 
and political; and Christianity must dominate the 
whole . 

This is* Christianity’s hour. Christianity must find 
the high ground that stands between the two extremes, 
that leads at length in peace to justice and brother¬ 
hood. The brotherhood message of Jesus, so long re¬ 
served to individuals, must be applied to governments 
as well. “I am my brother’s keeper”; and by as much 


152 


What Men Need Most 


the state is brother to the nations, and no state has the 
moral right to exist free and silent anywhere while 
another state is bound by chains it cannot break. 

Patriotism begins at home; it does not end there; 
the security of remoteness is now denied us; the geog¬ 
raphy of distance has been destroyed. There are no 
separating seas. The farthest tribe has become our 
next-door neighbour. We are all hopelessly bound 
together. 

It took a League of Nations to win the World War. 
Without unity among the nations and a working pro¬ 
gramme of agreement we cannot win the peace. 

That there are dangers in this new way; that grave 
problems beset the new order, will not be denied. We 
admit that in the conclusion of logic, and by the record 
of what has gone before, there is for us no final evi¬ 
dence, no conclusive testimony. The evidence is, “the 
evidence of things not seen.” 

Ours is an adventure of faith. But we have tried 
every other road. We have tested every other promise. 
We have gone to the end of the trail with traditional 
statesmanship and we have found there a catastrophe 
that almost wrecked man. Whether in desperation of 
despair, or in the eagerness of hope new-born, destiny 
has spoken, faith has decreed, and we must give the 
new order a chance to be. 

Perhaps I feel as I do because I have seen Europe 
a sepulchre, because my eyes have rested upon the fields 
that lie before Verdun as thickly pitted by shell-fire 
as a man’s face is pitted from a dread disease, because 
my.hands have dripped the blood of men who died 
against my breast, or perhaps it is because I have not 
ceased to pray, “Our Father ” 

Such, then, is the spiritual basis for the new cru- 


The Call of the New Crusade 153 

sade. It lias no backward look. It presses toward 
the mark of the high calling, and its voice cries might¬ 
ily, “Be strong!” 

What, then, of youth, the stalwart full-grown and 
morally seasoned now, who bore so large a part in the 
stupendous struggle, and what of these others who fol¬ 
low in his train ? In the programme of Christianity, in 
the challenge of Christ, here and nowhere else does he 
find his adequate incentive, his task big enough, his 
moral equivalent for war. 

Youth, which is thy darling? 

Dull ease, tame prosperity, craven safety? 

Or Danger, strong young danger, clean-limbed danger, 
Brave-hearted danger? 

State, wouldst thou win youth unto thy service? 

Call him not then with rich emoulments and pomp of 
office, 

But dare him, rather, to risk his fortune, 

To burn behind him the bridges of mammon, 

And, toil and pain and loss and death embracing, 

To win for thee thy glorious future. 

Church, wouldst thou win youth unto thy service? 
Call him not with plaintive music and soothing sermon; 
Invite him not with sectarian difference; 

Never for him expunge and soften the words of Jesus; 
But gird on him the sword and buckler, 

And send him forth with trumpet sounding 
The call of Christ’s crusade. 

This is youth’s darling: 

Not ease, nor comfort, nor tame prosperity, nor craven 
safety. 

But Danger—strong young danger, clean-limbed dan¬ 
ger, 

Brave-hearted danger. 


16 

THE CURSE OF COWARDICE 

Text: St. Make: 14: 71. “He began to curse 
and to swear, saying , I know not this man of 
whom ye speak” 

The heaviest blow suffered by Jesus on the day He 
stood before the high priest was not the one struck by 
the officer of the court; it was the denial of Peter. 

The Master who gave His life rather than renounce 
the truth, who swerved not an inch from exact honesty 
Himself, found one of His own and closest companions 
at the first approach of the great crisis toward which 
His entire ministry had moved from the beginning, 
fleeing like a craven. It was as though a veteran of 
many training-camps and numerous skirmishes had 
galloped to the rear at the first roar of artillery when 
the main battle opened. 

And what must have been the remorse of Peter 
when he came to himself,—no man can imagine it. 
Only the grace of the One against whom he had sinned 
saved the impetuous disciple from permanent disgrace 
and perhaps self-destruction. But as quick as was the 
wrong, so quick were the penitence and the call for 
forgiveness when by the crowing of the cock Peter was 
faced by his cowardly rejection. 

What is the curse of cowardice? The curse of 

cowardice is falsehood. The coward is a lie. It is 

possible for a coward to speak words that are in them- 

154 


155 


The Curse of Cowardice 

selves true,—a craven has lifted the sword of a hero, 
but it is not possible for a coward to be true. Truth 
casteth out fear; where one is, the other is not. 

The curse of cowardice is selfishness, Peter feared 
for his own safety. Jesus was the victim of power, 
power that could, as Peter saw it, crush Him. To save 
his own life, Peter said “Ho” to his best friend. 

The curse of cowardice is cruelty. Peter’s denial 
caused Jesus to suffer as no weapon-thrust could have. 

The curse of cowardice is shame. A shamed man 
is indeed a hapless fellow. One may rise from a hun¬ 
dred defeats with strength of soul increased, but the 
man who must despise himself is without hope. 

The curse of cowardice is defeat. There is never 
an excuse for failure. A man may fail completely in 
the eyes of the world, just as Jesus did, and yet glori¬ 
ously succeed. Peal success is spiritual, and may or 
may not be crowned outwardly. Fundamentally the 
coward is always and altogether a failure. He may 
silence criticism for the moment; he may even drive 
an army from the field when he is conscious of over¬ 
whelming odds; but his defeat is inevitable, for it is 
within him. 

To sum up: All cowardice is moral cowardice. 
There are physical giants who are moral cowards, but 
they are physical cowards too invariably in a great 
crisis. Men frail and of little brawn, who with su¬ 
preme self-denial face some Waterloo of the soul, 
would have gone as quietly to destruction on a battle¬ 
field. 

The man who in a sudden rush of terror when under 
fire for the first time turns and flees may or may not 
be a coward. If not, he will come back to-morrow with 
the determination of a dozen ordinary men. 


156 


What Men Need Most 


Peter denied quickly. We must prepare to make 
prompt decisions, to say “Yes” or “Ho” quickly. 
Such preparation is heart-preparation. There was no 
time for Peter to argue with himself when he was 
asked as to his discipleship. Had his heart been right, 
right as it was a little later, his “Yes” would have 
been as quick and resolute as was his “Ho.” 

He repeated his denial. Once started in the wrong 
direction, it is easier to go on than it is to go back. 
Peter fixed his course with his first “Ho,” and the 
second and third denials were in the line of least 
resistance. We should have a care for each step taken, 
each decision made, not only because of immediate 
values, but because of the effect of present actions on 
future conduct. 

Peter became angry, and he swore. Elsewhere in 
the Bible appears the record that when the servant 
maid insisted that he was a disciple of Jesus, Peter 
used an oath to emphasise his denial. It is human 
nature to bluster when one is caught in a compromis¬ 
ing position; to make a loud noise in lieu of an argu¬ 
ment, to shout in a vain effort to drown the quieter 
voice of reason. An oath is always an apology for good 
sense. The profane man is generally a puppet or a 
weakling. A curse is the blunderbuss of a coward. 

Peter repented. There are many who deny as Peter 
did; and for those the example of this vigorous, im¬ 
petuous man is most heartening. He was sorry for his 
sin, ashamed of his cowardice; and he was more, he 
was repentant. He did not go on in his evil way, and 
he did not follow the example of Judas:—he did not 
slay himself. Like a man he right-about faced, con¬ 
fessed his error, and sought forgiveness. Ho one of 
us need be discouraged, utterly dismayed. We too 


The Curse of Cowardice 157 

have the privilege of turning back from sinful wan¬ 
derings. 

Peter was forgiven . Jesus Christ can make the 
weak strong, the sinful pure, the coward brave. This 
is the great lesson we may learn from Peter. Just as 
it is “Christ in us the hope of glory,” so it is the Son 
of God who “casteth out fear.” ~No Christian has 
reason to be afraid, and the follower of the Lord ought 
to be everywhere, in all circumstances, the “bravest 
of the brave.” 


4 



“COME ON ! LET’S GO !” * 

Text: St. John 14:31. “Arise, let us go 
hence” 

At an International Conference of Christian En- 
deavourers, the words which serve as the subject of this 
chapter were adopted as a slogan and rallying-call for 
a new forward campaign. 

They came, of course, with all the patriotic associa¬ 
tions of the great war in which youth played so large 
a part. Upon the platform when the slogan was sug¬ 
gested were men in uniform only recently returned 
from overseas, and the speaker who first used it had 
himself heard the words under all the stern circum¬ 
stances of armed conflict. 

“Come on! Let’s go!” Perhaps no other words 
were so expressive as these of the spirit of the ranks 
in the bloody times now happily .gone. They were 
slang before the war, but in the war they were glori¬ 
fied. They were part of the great fusing process that 
brought men and women of all grades and classes to¬ 
gether in one great purpose. They belonged to officers 
and doughboys alike; they were among the most 
dynamic words of the service. They were heard in 
canteens and in Y. M. C. A. huts as “buddies” starting 
for their billets called to each other; they were the easy 

* This sermon and the three following were preached as a seriee 
entitled, “Sermons from the Service.” 

158 


“Come On! Let's Gof* 


159 


words of rest-camps and replacement-stations; and they 
were the stern and fateful words that broke the agony 
of suspense for men who had waited for the zero hour 
and the charge. 

At three o’clock one February morning during the 
intensive fire that preceded the great raid upon bat¬ 
talion headquarters at Seicheprey, a runner from a bat¬ 
tery of the Fifth Field Artillery, then in support of 
the First Division, which was holding the famous Toul 
sector, plunged into a dugout canteen; straight through 
the double gas curtains he came, and on into the 
adjoining room where forty-seven worn-out men were 
sleeping in the stupor of exhaustion that even artil¬ 
lery fire does not disturb. A battery had been hit, 
hard hit; fresh men were needed for cannon-fodder. 

Presently a sergeant, followed by one, two, three, 
four, five, lads, stumbled out of the quarters. Swiftly, 
while yet in the grip of sleep, they adjusted their 
accoutrements, and then lined up in front of the 
counter for the hot coffee that was waiting for them. 
Another minute, and they were ready. The sergeant 
shot a quick word or two at the runner, who had come 
fast and was spent, ran his eyes appraisingly over the 
privates in front of him, and then leaped into the 
narrow entrance with two words barked from his lips, 
“Let’s go!” And out into the storm and dark and 
death five men followed him. 

To-night, as again I see them go, I think of twelve 
men who have been seated together in a quiet chamber, 
set back from the noises of an Eastern city,—twelve 
men who have known much of hardship and bitterness 
together, twelve men; there had been one more, but 
already he had gone out. Under the magic of their 
leader’s words and presence eleven men had forgotten 


160 


What Men Need Most 

all of their trials and disappointments; from the stern 
facts of their lives they had passed to dreams of power, 
and their captain’s warnings are for the moment little 
understood. 

Then abruptly he terminates the conference; suiting 
his words to action, he says, “Arise, let us go hence”; 
and forth he leads them to Gethsemane and Calvary. 

It is a far call from the first century of the Chris¬ 
tian era to the twentieth, and a yet farther call from 
Jerusalem to Toul, from the programme of the Prince 
of Peace to the bloody doings of the great war. But 
for me the words of the sergeant spoken in the noisome 
dugout are forever and inseparably associated with the 
words of Jesus in the upper room, “Let’s go,” and 
“Arise, let us go hence.” Hor will I rest quietly under 
the charge, should any one be so blind as not to see my 
purpose, that thus to relate the two is to misrepresent 
my Lord, is to give His sanction to armed conflict. 

The words of the sergeant spoken as he plunged into 
the dark stairway of that front line cellar four years 
ago have three implications in common with the words 
of Jesus. 

They were a clear and unmistakable call to men to 
leave their present position; to turn their backs upon 
rest and safety; comfort and comrades; and to go out 
into darkness and danger. The tired fellows who 
jammed their helmets down upon their heads that 
morning in the old Y. M. C. A. canteen had earned 
their night of rest, earned it in the snow and mud of 
caving trenches; but the sergeant said, “Let’s go,” and 
they went. 

When Jesus spoke to His eleven disciples in the 
upper room of Jerusalem, His words meant vastly 
more than any hearer dreamed; they were the fateful 


161 


“Come On! Let's Gof* 

call to leave the old life forever; the old life ‘with its 
bitter but with its sweet; the old life with its rich 
companionship, with its conversations as congenial 
men walked together through the restful open places 
of the hack country; with evenings spent with friends, 
its ministry of comfort and healing when the great 
Physician placed His physical hands upon the heads 
of the sick and distressed; the old life with its Mount 
of Transfiguration and its triumphal entry; the old 
life with its moments of glory. 

From all of this He said, “Arise, let us go hence”; 
and from the old life which had found Him so often 
the misunderstood and maligned, which had left Him 
hungry and homeless before the gates of unfriendly 
cities, which had stamped Him with the mark of shame 
and held Him up to ridicule and scorn, which had set 
the people He loved against Him, and turned fol¬ 
lowers into traitors; the old life of Nazareth and Beth¬ 
lehem, of Bethany and Galilee, of Capernaum and 
Samaria and Jerusalem, of weary feet and hungry 
soul,—the old life was now forever behind Him; from 
it He was turning deliberately away. 

The second implication follows naturally the first. 
The men who hurried out of the dugout on the old 
Toul sector that winter morning left it not in retreat, 
but to go forward. The words used by the sergeant 
were never words of retreat. “Let’s go” meant always, 
and whatever the risks and the odds, “Let’s go on, and 
on, and on!” 

Years ago I heard a story of a drummer boy of Na¬ 
poleon who, wounded and dying, had been propped 
against the caisson of a broken gun by his solicitous 
hut on-hurrying comrades. At length the tide of 
battle turned against France. Back came the broken 


162 


What Men Need Most 

squares in precipitous flight. A marshal saw the lad, 
who seemed asleep, and shook him roughly. “Beat 
the retreat!” he cried. “Beat the retreat!” The 
hoy’s eyes fluttered open, closed, and fluttered open 
again. In surprise he looked about; and then, becom¬ 
ing conscious of the rout, he replied: “Sir, I cannot 
beat a retreat. I do not know how to beat a retreat. 
Desaix never taught me how. But I can heat a charge 
that will call the dead to life. I heat the charge at 
the Pyramids. I heat it at Mt. Tabor and the Bridge 
of Lodi. Sir, shall I beat it now?” The fire in the 
soul of the dying boy touched into flame again the 
failing embers in the heart of the marshal, and he 
shouted, “Then, hero child of Prance, beat the 
charge.” And over the dead and dying, over the can¬ 
non and artillery, the lad propped against the broken 
gun, his own life-blood ebbing fast, drummed the way 
to victory. 

Often in the great war men did not know what their 
destination was, nor had they seen before the rugged 
path their feet must climb, the dangers their courage 
must dare. But always they knew that “Let’s Go” 
meant straight ahead, forward march. 

Returning from France I found myself on the same 
ship with a group of Red Cross officials, among them 
Mr. Abner Larned, a public-spirited and distinguished 
business man of Detroit. From him I heard for the 
first time what is now one of the finest stories of the 
war. Mr. Larned was on the Tusccmia when she was 
destroyed by a submarine off the coast of Ireland. 
Rescued by the crew of a destroyer, he kept to the 
deck while the swift scout of the sea rushed hither and 
thither through the gathering darkness, searching for 
the remaining survivors. 


“Come On! Let's Gor 


163 


When the quest was about to be abandoned, off the 
starboard quarter singing was heard. Immediately the 
little vessel set her course by the sound; and, coming 
on carefully through the gloom, discovered a catamaran 
crowded with soldiers who were singing at the top of 
their youthful lungs, “Where do we go from here, 
boys? Where do we go from here?” Adrift upon a 
winter sea, helpless and freezing, with little hope of 
rescue, their hearts were strong, and still responded to 
the marching-orders of their country’s great advance. 

And when Jesus led His disciples down from the 
Jerusalem conference into the night and on toward the 
Garden, whatever may have been His knowledge, hu¬ 
manly speaking, of the ordeal that was before Him, 
His companions were in ignorance of the tragedy so 
soon to follow. They were under marching-orders, 
and they were going forward; this they knew, for 
always He led them forward; but they saw only the 
next step; the great events of the future were hidden 
from them, and well it was! And well it is for us that 
life is not at once a complete revelation. Were we 
in possession of the facts, our faith would often fail. 
Better for us the command, “Arise and go,” with the 
terms and conditions of our going sealed orders to be 
opened in the morning. 

“I do not ask to see the distant scene, 

One step enough for me.” 

The third implication is the implication of leader¬ 
ship; leadership that leads, that discovers the path and 
shows the way, that sets the pace and shares the dan¬ 
gers; a leadership that is companionship as well as 
command. It was not, “You go,” that early morning 


164 


What Men Need Most 

in the cellar. It was “Let’s go.” And, as I saw the 
last man of the six pass through the gas curtains, I 
knew that the sergeant who went up first would never 
have been anywhere else than in front of the men he 
was taking into mortal danger. 

And it was Jesus, not Peter, nor James nor John, 
who said, “Arise, let us go hence.” It was Jesus who 
led the little company across the brook Kidron; it 
was Jesus who after the last disciple had been left to 
slumber in forgetfulness at the edge of Gethsemane 
went yet a little farther. Always it was Jesus who led 
the way; and, whatever men may say of Him, they 
will not say that He sent His followers forth alone, 
or that He thrust them into dangers He Himself re¬ 
fused to accept. 

How suggestively eloquent are His words, “Arise, 
let us go hence,” and how illuminating His “Come 
with me; come with me!” 

These words are more than the words of an ancient 
invitation; they are the call of Jesus Christ to every 
man and woman, His call to you and me. To us He 
is saying, “Arise, let us go!” Let us leave the past 
behind. Let us go forth from the evil or unworthy 
surroundings of our lives, and press toward the better 
things, toward the heights of happiness, toward the 
mark of the high calling which is in Christ Jesus. 

Are you living an unclean and a sinful life, a double 
life, a life of which you are sick, a life of broken 
vows, a life of wrongs against another ? Arise and go! 

Are you living short of your best, unworthy of your 
own ambitions and of the hopes of those who love and 
trust you; living indolently, slovenly; living merely 
to fill the hours ? Arise and go! 

Are you living in fear,—fear of discovery, fear of 


“Come On! Let's Go!" 


165 


disease, fear of defeat, fear of death ? Are yon living 
selfishly, successfully, even brilliantly, but for your¬ 
self alone, dancing to the music of indulgence, chasing 
the short-lived butterfly of pleasure? Do not delay, 
but arise! Arise and go! 

Are you living with your losses and your griefs, 
holding the broken vessels of memory, dwelling with 
your vanished joys in yesterday? Arise, and go! 

Are you living with doubts,—doubt of God and 
doubt of good, doubt of friends, and doubt of your¬ 
self ? 

Are you living in the uncertainty of delayed deci¬ 
sions, in the enervating atmosphere of procrastination; 
living in promises which should long since have become 
programmes ? If you are, if you are, arise and go! 

Leave where you are, and start for where you ought 
to be. Turn from your secret sin, your pet indulgence; 
turn from your shame, turn from your griefs, your 
self-pity and complaint; rise from the ashes of your 
losses; take up again the task your bravest hopes once 
fixed upon. Put out the fires of your rest-camp, and 
forward march! 

And, as you go, remember that before you started, 
that before you gave attention to His words and heeded 
the command, that before you rose to go, He rose to 
go before you. The forward-leading road is often dark 
and full of unanticipated mysteries, but it will be light 
unto your feet, for He is the lamp of its way. 

For “yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with 
me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” 


18 

“LAFAYETTE, WE ARE HERE!” * 


Text: Ecclesiastes 11:1. “Cast thy bread 
upon the waters , for thou shalt find it after 
many days ” 

Whether General Pershing actually used the words 
a 9 attributed to him or not, or whether they represent 
the genius for the eternal fitness of things of some 
newspaper correspondent, “Lafayette, we are here,” 
more eloquently than any other words, signalised 
America’s entry into the war. They were words that 
gave a reason and interpreted a spirit, words that the 
humblest man in the ranks quickly understood, words 
the significance of which did not escape the most casual 
reader of American history. 

“Lafayette, we are here,”—here to pay a debt, or, 
rather, here to return in kind service for service ren¬ 
dered; here in what, with all else that it represents 
and means, is a supreme expression of appreciation for 
the great and generous young Frenchman who was one 
of the brightest lights that shone in the darkest night 
of the Revolution. 

The cynical times in which we live have produced 
jazz in literature as well as in music, and. some of the 
fairest stories and finest traditions of a nation’s life 
are reset and revised until for the reverence with 

* Sermon preached on Lincoln’s Birthday. 

166 



“Lafayette, We Are Here!” 


167 


which they were once received is substituted a satirical 
familiarity, a superficial and disgusting half-tolerance. 
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jef¬ 
ferson, Patrick Henry, Ulysses S. Grant, and Abraham 
Lincoln,—Lincoln who long escaped the common fate, 
—have all been victims of these panderers in print, 
who cultivate and feed the jaded and neurotic literary 
appetite. 

The Marquis de Lafayette has not been spared. But 
what is the story, the real story, memories of which 
sent waves of emotion over the nation when “La¬ 
fayette, we are here,” was flashed under the oceans 
and across the continents? 

Lafayette was a youth of nineteen when he came to 
throw in his lot with the Continentals; he was born 
of a distinguished line, the son of a soldier killed in 
the* service of France. At a military dinner in Metz 
early in 1776 the generous impulses of his heart were 
first stirred by the story of the American Bevolution. 
He was a young officer of the Guards, and under 
orders; but he determined to join the forces of Wash¬ 
ington. On being ordered back by the French king, 
when he was about to sail from a Spanish port, he 
seemed at first to acquiesce in his sovereign’s orders, 
but later escaped, and with Baron de Kalb and others 
sailed hurriedly for America in an uncompleted ship. 
He was received by Congress with open arms, and for 
him Washington formed a high and most affectionate 
opinion, which he never ceased to hold. When in¬ 
trigue had reached its depths and the great commander 
cried out that he wished every foreigner back in Eu¬ 
rope, he concluded, “Excepting Marquis de Lafayette.” 

While the commission of major-general voted the 
young Frenchman was hardly warranted, he never 



168 


What Men Need Most 


proved himself unworthy, nor did any man use his 
honours more effectively for the struggling people 
whose representatives bestowed them. Where other 
officers, native as well as foreign, failed in the field or 
were false to the trust of their leader, Lafayette gave 
an unbroken example of loyalty as well as of bril¬ 
liancy. At Brandywine, where he was wounded, he 
led his men with distinction, and at Valley Forge, 
where his command on Barren Hill was attacked by 
the enemy in overwhelming numbers, he demonstrated 
his ability when on the defensive. 

In 1779 he returned to France to add his voice to 
the plea for additional help from France, now also at 
war with England. In 1780 he returned to America, 
successful, and was at once sent to meet Benedict Ar¬ 
nold, who was invading Virginia. From his private 
purse Lafayette provisioned and clothed his men, and 
plunged into a campaign that did not end until Corn¬ 
wallis, the boaster, surrendered at Yorktown. Edward 
Everett has spoken eloquently of the youthful Marquis 
as he led personally one of the assaults in this fateful 
siege of the war. Having returned to France again, 
Lafayette learned of the successful termination of the 
Revolution, at Cadiz, where he had put in with a force 
of 26,000 men he was leading to reinforce Washing¬ 
ton. 

Lafayette made two more visits to the country he 
had so generously served, and was entertained as the 
guest of the nation. On the first, in 1784, he was with 
Washington at Mt. Vermon, and on the second, forty 

years later, he covered the country in a tour of tri¬ 
umph. 

The services of Lafayette to his own country, while 
they did not reveal him as a successful political leader 


169 


“Lafayette, We Are Here!” 

and administrator in great and complicated issues, con¬ 
tinued to present him as a sincere lover of democracy, 
a gallant defender of the persecuted, and an unfailing 
servant of the people. 

Under the constitutional monarchy which preceded 
the French Revolution, he was commander-in-chief of 
the National Guard, which enrolled more than three 
million men. It was Lafayette who suggested the sub¬ 
stitution of the tricolour for the old standard of 
royalty. Always he was against the imperial ambi¬ 
tions of Napoleon. He advocated trial by jury, popu¬ 
lar representation, emancipation of the slaves, free¬ 
dom of the press, abolition of titles (and renounced his 
own), the suppression of privileged orders, and free¬ 
dom of worship; and he incurred the undying hatred 
of the Jacobins by his defence of the Protestants. His 
head was demanded by the Revolution, and he escaped, 
only to be arrested by Austria and imprisoned for five 
years, first in Austria and then in Prussia. 

Than Marquis de Lafayette, Citizen Lafayette by his 
own choice, no man has ever appeared in public life 
who manifested nobler instincts and finer courage. 
His contribution to America can hardly be over¬ 
estimated. More than the men and arms he finally 
brought, more than the money he contributed so freely 
and largely, more than the very considerable value of 
his military leadership, was the weight of his moral 
and spiritual decision, which strengthened the morale 
of the Colonists when faith had found her anchors 
dragging in the storm. 

Not much of similarity is there between this youth¬ 
ful devotee of freedom, who sprang from the loins of 
Old-World aristocracy, and the gaunt and at times 
uncouth Abraham Lincoln, whose birth the world re- 


170 


What Men Need Most 


members with us. But one thing they had in common, 
—the passion for truth, which, when it fires the human 
soul, melts down the gold of feudal crowns and burns 
up the superficial barriers of classes. 

Lafayette and Lincoln brought their talents, brought 
their all, to the same altar of service. 

One was a very gallant, a very generous, gentleman; 
a Frenchman who loved freedom so unselfishly that he 
became a citizen of the world: the other, the saviour 
of his country, who because of his suffering and his 
service, who because of his attributes of mind and 
heart, which in him assumed proportions unsurpassed, 
unreached, since Jesus, became a man for the ages. 

There is a story told of a youthful prince who was 
sent in quest of the most wonderful thing in the world. 
He came early to a valley in which bloomed an exqui¬ 
site flower. Entranced by its perfect symmetry, its 
delicate colouring, and its intoxicating aroma, he de¬ 
clared his search ended, and lay down to sleep. When 
he awoke, he found himself beside a withered stalk 
that gave forth noisome odours. 

Disappointed, he went on his way. How his journey 
led him to the heights. Above him towered the mon¬ 
arch of the mountains, snow-clad, ice-crowned, and 
robed in mists shot through with flaming gold, poured 
down from rivers of the sun. His soul took on a mood 
of exaltation. “O most sublime, most wonderful, art 
thou!” he cried. But even as he spoke, the ranges 
shook beneath him; great thunders rolled; the lights 
went out on the peaks; and darkness came like death. 
The hidden furies of the inner earth broke forth; they 
poured their liquid wrath down all the frozen steeps; 
they clove the summit from its base to its crown, and 
hurled its granite breast upon the cities of the plain. 



“Lafayette, We Are Here!” 


171 


The voices of the dying came like sounds from many 
waters, on the rushing winds. 

The prince in horror sank upon the crumbling path; 
his voice was dumb; his limbs refused his will; he 
waited for his end. Then strong arms lifted him. 
When he awoke, the night of wrath had passed. He 
lay again beside the withered stalk and in the distance 
the shattered mountain raised its humbled head. But 
he was not alone. By his side now stood a man, clean¬ 
limbed and golden-haired, deep-chested and broad of 
shoulders; his eyes were as the eagle’s, direct, piercing, 
and far-seeing; his forehead broad; his head of great 
proportions; and, when he smiled, the earth seemed 
full of laughing children. 

The prince inquired, “You brought me here?” and 
the man replied, “I brought you here, and I will bear 
you forth”; and, suiting his action to his words, he 
lifted the prince and as one who walks for joy without 
a burden carried him from the valley of death. Then 
cried the prince, “Man, thou art most wonderful, for 
thou canst lift me when I fall; thou canst save me 
when I faint; thou canst comfort me when I fear; for 
thou dost serve, and thou dost never die.” 

In Lincoln next to Jesus the world finds to-day the 
finest attributes and most generous powers of idealised 
human character. Because of him she cries, “Man is 
most wonderful,” and, whatever the differences be¬ 
tween Lincoln and Lafayette, wherever their varying 
degrees of genius, they had in common a great spiritual 
impulse that fructified in a life of unselfish service. 

“Lafayette, we are here.” These were the words of 
an hour of national exaltation, an hour in which we 
knew ourselves turning away from rivers of blood out 
of which we had sluiced sticky, dripping gold, an hour 



172 


What Men Need Most 

that found us entering upon a new era in international 
relationships, an era of ministry, the era of the soul. 
And while we spoke to France and called the name 
of Lafayette, our words were for all the broken and 
discouraged forces of the Allies. To England and 
Italy and Belgium, yea, and to Germany and Austria 
and Russia, to the whole world, they meant: “We are 
here to lend our aid; we are here to make our offering, 
to bring our contribution; we have come to suffer and 
bleed and die. We are here to give, and not to get.” 

The spirit in which the nation said it was what I 
believe is the spirit of that great text, “Cast thy bread 
upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many 
days.” There are those who hold that the spirit of 
this familiar Scriptural passage is the spirit of a wise 
and far-seeing commercial maxim, that here is a charge 
for men to make ventures in trade in order that they 
may receive a large return for their expenditure. This 
view is thought by some to be supported by the state¬ 
ment concerning the good woman in Proverbs 31:14, 
“She is like the merchant ships; she bringeth her bread 
from afar.” But so far as I am concerned such an 
interpretation is far removed from the spirit of Ec¬ 
clesiastes or the Preacher. 

I believe that the only justifiable interpretation is: 
“Do good without thought or even hope of return. Do 
good in the most unlikely and unpromising, the most 
discouraging quarters. Do good, and then forget it.” 
The text is also clear in its statement of the unfailing 
law of compensation. “Thou shalt find it after many 
days.” Good will surely return to you, but this, which 
in course of time will certainly result, is not to be the 
motive for the deed. 

It would take a vivid imagination to detect an ul- 


“Lafayette, We 'Are Here!” 


173 


terior purpose behind Lafayette's visit to America and 
his service under Washington. For him there was 
nothing of selfish profit in it; dangers, financial losses, 
pain, mental anguish,—to these he opened his arms. 
Death seemed the only sure termination for the adven¬ 
ture. 

And the purpose of the American people in entering 
the great war will not he questioned, will not be mis¬ 
understood, when discriminating history has been 
written. The carelessly spoken words of an ambas¬ 
sador, living too close to scenes of partisan controversy 
to see clearly served to clarify the minds of the Ameri¬ 
can people as to their purposes and only objective in 
the supreme physical and spiritual ordeal to which they 
gave their treasure and their sons. 

Is there, then, no hope of a blessing for service ren¬ 
dered, not as the reason, or even a reason, for the 
service, but as a soul-strengthening inspiration, as an 
anchor to faith? Yes, there is always the great hope, 
and more than hope it is; it is the peace of deep as¬ 
surance. Do good, and good somehow, somewhere 
sometime, will come back to you. Cast your bread 
upon the waters, and after many days you will find 
it, and, finding it, will find that it has been multiplied. 

And here is the heart of the matter: You do good 
and forget; you give and ask for no return. Then in 
your soul through all subsequent days you carry the 
blessedness that comes from having done well, the sat¬ 
isfaction of having helped another; and though you 
may be financially poorer, you are richer in peace. The 
person who casts his bread upon the waters, with no 
eagerness to find it again, who gives and forgets, suf¬ 
fers no disillusionment when the return is long de¬ 
layed, no waste of strength, no loss of mental poise 


174 


What Men Need Most 

through impatience. Though he may be happily sur¬ 
prised, he can never be disappointed. 

Lafayette lived to hear his name in tones of love 
upon the lips of the people he had served; he must 
have died a very happy man. But Lafayette did not 
live long enough to see the larger returns from his 
investment. One hundred and forty years were to 
pass before the children of the Continentals would 
sweep in mighty reinforcements across the ravished 
fields of France to lift their shout, “Lafayette, we are 
here !” 

But the greater good was not denied; the richer 
blessing came, and in it was the salvation of a nation, 
as in the offering of Lafayette had been the succour 
of a people. 

The bread cast upon the waters, the treasure thrown 
unselfishly down upon the stream of life, is never lost; 
always it returns to bless. 

That which is passed on with evil purpose is heard 
from again, too, for the evil returns to curse. “The 
wages of sin is death”; and “Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap.” Daily the papers of the city 
carry morbid stories of men and women who by some 
catastrophe have been caught in the meshes of their 
long-hidden indulgences and excesses; their sin is pub¬ 
lished. The very delay in the carrying out of the sen¬ 
tence promised upon those who break the law of God, 
who pervert the finest instincts of the human soul, often 
lulls men and women into indifference; but let us re¬ 
member, and may the disaster that has come upon 
others be a warning, God does not lie. God is not 
mocked. As a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
The wages of sin is death. 

But—but the gift of God is life, life eternal, life 


“Lafayette, We Are Here!” 175 ' 

through Jesus Christ, “through Jesus Christ our 
Lord.’ 7 

To join to this what finer words are there than Lin¬ 
coln’s words, words of faith and courage, words of 
prophecy, words of admonition, words of consecration? 

“It is for us, the living, to be dedicated to the un¬ 
finished work which they who fought have thus far so 
nobly advanced. It is for us to be dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us; that from these hon¬ 
oured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for 
which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that 
we highly resolve that these dead shall not have died 
in vain; that this nation under God shall have a new 
birth of freedom; and that government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from 
the earth.” 

I do not ask, O Lord, a life all free from pain; 

I do not seek to be in this vast world of sin 
Without my load and care. 

For this I know, the present cross is my eternal gain; 

And he who struggling battles on 

At last shall enter in and be a victor there. 

So Lord, just keep me clean within, 

And make me strong to fight; 

And I will follow through the din 
From darkness up to light. 


v r- 


) 


19 

WHO WON THE WARP * 

Text: St. Luke 22: 24. “And there was also 
a strife among them, which of them should be 
accounted the greatest ” 

It is a tense moment in an upper room in Jerusalem. 
The time is the feast of unleavened bread, which was 
called the passover. Jesus has been in most intimate 
conference with His disciples, and the Lord’s Supper 
has just been instituted. The tragic words, “Behold, 
the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the 
table,” have just been uttered, and the disciples have 
been thrown into confusion with their suspicions of 
one another. It is at this point that Luke enters upon 
his record, “There was also a strife among them, which 
of them should be accounted the greatest.” 

At first it seems a grotesque, an unexcusable thing, 
—this wrangle, this petty quarrel, of the disciples, so 
out of place, so far removed from the spirit in which 
their Lord has talked and supped with them. We can 
hardly forgive these men for the false note thrown into 
the perfect though tragic symphony of the night. 

But they were men, men who for days now had lived 
under the strain of the events just preceding Geth- 
semane and Calvary. They had listened to words 
they found themselves less and less able to understand. 

* Sermon preached on Washington’s Birthday. 

176 


Who Won the War? 


177 


Their Master was more and more a mystery as He 
approached the travail of His soul. They have seen 
Him in militant mood drive the traffickers from the 
temple, in triumphant glory pass through the acclaim¬ 
ing multitudes and under the gate of the city. Almost 
they had touched the sceptre and bowed before the 
crown. His very miracles now seemed prophetic of an 
hour close at hand when for the humble seat He would 
accept the mighty. They are in no mood to catch the 
deeper meaning of His words, and He knows full well 
they cannot hear a plainer statement. 

If ever men had an excuse for nerves and a clear 
title to a physical and mental reaction from the exalta¬ 
tion of supreme spiritual experiences, the disciples 
had. That they remembered the hidden messages of 
these latter hours after the great ordeal was past is 
proof conclusive that they, the chosen vessels of His 
plan, were without vital flaw. 

Jesus understood, understood them, and so did not 
overvalue, did not misunderstand their words. He 
knew their mental and physical state, knew what they 
had passed through and what they must experience. 
He was not impatient with them; His rebuke shows no 
trace of indignation. His attitude is that of a con¬ 
siderate, patient friend or rather father. I cannot 
imagine Him raising His voice, hut so vitalised were 
the words by His all-possessing Spirit, that, though 
they no doubt went practically unheeded there, they 
were never forgotten, and now we know that they were 
spoken to live forever. 

And what a record the lives of these men, who for 
a moment fell into dispute over rewards and position, 
—what a record of unselfish ministry their lives re¬ 
veal ! Over the whole world they poured their deeds; 


178 


What Men Need Most 

homeless and beset by jealousies and hardships and 
mortal dangers, they went about doing good, nor did 
they ever ask again for the places of the mighty. 

There are those who seem to find a certain satisfac¬ 
tion out of morbidly interpretating this upper-room 
experience. Into it they read a curse upon ambition, 
and from it they draw a spineless, flabby character, 
not only self-effacing but self-debasing. For this in¬ 
terpretation I have no patience. Strong men climbed 
the stairs to meet with Jesus in the upper room; strong 
men took from Him the bread and wine of that first 
communion; strong men, men of passions held in 
leash; men of faith who for the moment stumbled in 
the dark, but stumbled on; stood upon their selfish 
rights and claimed their own, but then went forth to 
give their last and all without a treasured thought of 
self. 

Their mistake was the mistake of strength and not 
of weakness, but their strength was not a mistake. 
Jesus Christ valued them for the ardour of their youth, 
for the impatience of their enthusiasm, for their frank¬ 
ness, for their courage, ay, even their recklessness, I 
imagine. His concern was not because of their high 
spirits, but that they should release them, invest them, 
wisely, unselfishly; and there is nothing in the record 
of that night before Gethsemane’s betrayal to indicate 
that He had a single doubt about the final result. 

Jesus Christ called men, called men to follow Him, 
to carry on His plan, to build His kingdom, men, men 
of manly attributes and powers. And to such He 
speaks to-day. 

Every great occasion comes upon an hour when those 
participating in it turn from measuring their strength 
against the common task to discussing their relative 


179 


Who Won the War? 

importance with one another, an hour of rivalry, an 
hour of jealousy, that may reach proportions of lasting 
bitterness unless the counsel that saved the disciples in 
the upper room is given and heeded. Such an hour fol¬ 
lowed the signing of the armistice, when the absorbing 
topic of the day in every military organisation of 
France, for doughboys and officers and among the 
civilians at home, indeed, between the statesmen of 
great nations as they faced each other across confer¬ 
ence tables, was, “Who won the war ?” 

We had a speech from Lloyd George in the Com¬ 
mons, and a special order of the day from General 
Haig; we had a diplomatic but unmistakable statement 
from Clemenceau; and in the Congress of the United 
States there were several spokesmen to enumerate the 
particular instances and ways in which America 
snatched victory from defeat, and saved the cause of 
the Allies from irretrievable disaster. Nor is it our 
purpose to hold a cynical judgment over these “his¬ 
torical statements/’ or statements in the interests of 
exact history, as they were sometimes called. For they 
were all true! 

France did win the war. Without the undying faith 
of her impoverished peasantry, the unyielding courage 
of her soldiers who fought as men only fight when their 
fields are overrun, their cities levelled, their homes 
destroyed, their sons slain by the engines of a ruthless 
invader, there would have been no triumph for demo¬ 
cratic peoples of the earth to have celebrated. Clemen¬ 
ceau was right, eternally right. France, who carries 
to-day from the Channel to the Alps, the marks of the 
world’s greatest blood-letting, whose children were 
offered to the red Moloch until his flaming throat was 
choked,—France, whose cities bore the supreme terror 


180 


What Men Need Most 


of that colossal struggle, and whose soul was tried as 
was the soul of no other land save Belgium,—France 
won the war; and the people of the earth cry, “Vive 
la France! 7 ’ 

And Britain won the war; won it in those first days 
when she refused to condone the offence against inter¬ 
national law, and the tearing up of treaties, when she 
offered up her First Hundred Thousand, forever first 
in the annals of international chastity and honour; 
won it with her fleet that kept the seas for freedom, 
and won it with the stream of her unfailing treasure. 
Britain won the war. 

And America won the war; won it with her idealism, 
won it by giving voice to the inimitable truth, by de¬ 
fending the at first obscured principles of international 
justice and honour, and then by bringing her un¬ 
touched and well-nigh inexhaustible resources of men, 
of money, and of supplies, to the support of the ex¬ 
hausted Allies; won it with her faith and the morale 
of her armies. America won the war. 

And what shall we say of Belgium and Italy? The 
part they played even now appears as absolutely indis¬ 
pensable to the success of the common cause. What 
would have been the result, had Italy turned to the 
Central Powers, and what the story told in future gen¬ 
erations had Belgium opened her boundaries without 
the siege of Liege and the spoliation of Louvain ? The 
state documents and the orders of generals, the speeches 
of prime ministers, of princes, and now of senators, 
are all correct. Even now we are able to evaluate with 
a fair sense of justice the contribution made by each 
and every sister nation in that colossal investment of 
life and treasure. 

Let no voice be raised to belittle the offering of any 


Who Won the War? 


181 


people, to question the motive of any state; let there he 
no vain comparisons and no idle boastings. There is 
glory enough for all. He is a poor friend of this or 
any other nation who seeks so to exalt the place of his 
country as to shame loyal citizens of another. 

The rivalry between organisations of the same army, 
between divisions and between regiments, between the 
army and the navy, between the regular and the volun¬ 
teer,—indeed, rivalries appearing everywhere, were 
always interesting, generally amusing, and only infre¬ 
quently really serious. After the armistice the prin¬ 
cipal theme of story-teller, song-writer, and amateur 
poet was, “Who won the war?” 

I remember a graveyard ballad, the refrain of which 
began, “Who won the war ? Our brigadier. Who won 
the war? He did it here” (pointing to the head). 
One of the more caustic answers to the question, and 
one that always left an unbiased observer under the 
impression that the speaker had very likely gone on a 
vacation without making the rather important mili¬ 
tary arrangements, was, “Who won the war? Why, 
the M. P” (Military Police). I found upon the 
whitewashed wall of an old building in Verdun this 
legend, written with the wet end of a soft brick, “Let¬ 
ters of Victory: M. P. and Y. M. C. A. Oh, but we 
love our Sunday-school teachers.” But this was merely 
the manifestation of the passing spirit of the hour. 
There were other things more serious. 

I am glad that the false impressions that for a time 
threatened to work a sad injury to the American 
Y. M. C. A. have not survived the test-tube of search¬ 
ing truth. Under difficulties that were always ap¬ 
palling, and at times beyond the powers of supermen, 
the Young Men’s Christian Association at home and 


182 


What Men Need Most 

abroad rendered a service to the American people that 
place us forever in the debt of the Red Triangle. 
Other welfare organisations did well; but the Y. M. 
C. A. was in a class by itself, because it began opera¬ 
tions at the beginning, and even before, and covered 
the entire theatre of operations, where others limited 
their activities to a few districts or organisations. The 
Y. M. C. A. took over the old army exchange, not be¬ 
cause it wished to do so, but because the commander- 
in-chief requested it to do so, and in spite of the fact 
that the Association leaders knew the perils of the step 
from the beginning. The exchange had always been 
the point of complaint in the service; but the job had 
to be done, the situation was imperative, and the Red 
Triangle with courage and determination tackled a 
task that the military authorities themselves confessed 
their inability to handle. 

General Pershing’s tribute to the efficiency of the 
Association at this point is unanswerable unless with 
those who have prejudices that do not surrender to 
facts. 

It was my privilege to see the Y. M. C. A. under 
all circumstances incident to war activities, from trans¬ 
port service and home training-camp, embarkation 
ports, and base hospitals, to huts on the line and in 
cellars under the “wire” of the advanced trenches. 
There were mistakes made; a few, only a few, out of 
thousands who wore the uniform of this great Chris¬ 
tian agency were found unworthy of the trust reposed 
in them; but no department of the service has a finer, 
cleaner, more glorious record than the Young Men’s 
Christian Association, and in saying this I voice the 
sentiments of the millions who were ministered to by it. 

General Pershing has spoken with an unmistakable 


183 


Who Won the War? 

emphasis concerning certain influences at work to dis¬ 
credit the Red Triangle, to rise upon its reported short¬ 
comings and delinquences. Let us not be blind to the 
bias of such attacks. 

Who won the war ? It was a great general of the 
First Division who said, “We could not have won the 
war without the Red Cross and the Red Triangle.” 

I found myself after a dreary ride from Haney in 
the Association offices on the Rue d’Aguesseau in Paris. 
There I found Harry Fisher, a former Christian En¬ 
deavour State president from Colorado. He was hot 
with fever and staggering like a wounded man. I tried 
to get him to bed, but it was no use. “Got to get 
back,” he said. “Promised the fellows.” “Got to get 
back,” and back he went, to die with pneumonia. He 
lies in a quiet churchyard near Le-Fuerta-Bernard. 
Two other friends of mine who wore the red badge 
of honour on their sleeves and bore the grace of God 
within their hearts, were killed in action, one as he 
lifted a cup of coffee to the lips of a wounded lad in 
a sunken battery, the other as he leaped forward, un¬ 
armed, beside the doughboys he had served in the 
trenches and from whom he refused to be separated 
when they went over the top in a charge. Ho calumny 
against the memory of these and their kind, no slander 
against the great organisation whose colours they wore, 
shall go unchallenged while I have a voice and hearing. 

But the question, the real question, Who won the 
war? is not yet answered. It remains an open ques¬ 
tion. Some results that for a time appear to be vic¬ 
tories are eventually recognised to have been disasters. 
Some time ago an article was written which was en¬ 
titled, “Germany’s Defeat in the Franco-Prussian 
War,” and who would say to-day that the terms wrung 


184 


What Men Need Most 


from a prostrate foe by Bismarck secured to tbe united 
German states a lasting triumph? In them were the 
seeds of a calamity, a calamity that the future historian 
will insist was inevitable from the beginning. France 
carried in her soul resentment for the wrong, and 
waited the hour of final accounting; her humiliation 
became her strength; she fed the fires of her hate, and 
kept them banked against the day when the inevitable 
conflagration should break forth. 

And now it is for France to take counsel from the 
past; now it is for the victorious Allies to learn lessons 
plainly taught by the disasters that have come upon all 
peoples who have failed to be just in victory or whose 
triumphs have not known the quality of mercy. What¬ 
ever Germany by her aggressions and barbarities has 
deserved, there are certain things that righteousness 
requires of us, and as Germany has paid and is now 
paying for following Nietzsche rather than Christ, so 
we shall pay if we fail to obey His greater law; if in 
our terms and exactions we do not “love our enemies.” 

The refusal of the United States to participate in 
material gains from the war is more and more a source 
of gratification to those who hope for the elimination 
of armed conflicts and the perfecting of peace. If to 
this we will now add a generous participation in the 
affairs of constructive internationalism, we shall win 
for ourselves the gratitude and confidence of all coun¬ 
tries, that will be a surer protection from attack than 
armies and fleets, and more profitable than tribute 
levied upon defeated peoples. In eagerness for power, 
power through the impoverishment of others, is a fun¬ 
damental weakness that standing armies cannot cor¬ 
rect; selfishness hath her own reward, a reward in the 
coin of bitterness and disaster. 


Who Won the War? 


185 


Not only for nations, but for individuals, the lesson 
is a vital one. The men and women who live for them¬ 
selves alone, who drive sharp bargains, who exact the 
pound of flesh, who capitalise the failures and humilia¬ 
tion of others for their own reward, may seem to 
prosper for a time; but pride goeth before a fall, and 
the law of compensation knows no favourites. There 
are times when retribution seems long delayed; indeed, 
when we do not see it at all; but as a man metes, so 
shall it be meted unto him; from this judgment there 
is no escape. 

The Father of his Country could have been, and 
was asked to be, its king instead. But in his mind 
was no thought of reward, and in his soul was no selfish 
ambition. When George Washington, the wealthy and 
already distinguished Virginia planter, broke with his 
class, and cast in his lot with the poverty-stricken Revo¬ 
lutionists, he had no dreams of power, no illusion as 
to his personal returns from the adventurer. He em¬ 
braced misunderstanding, sacrifice, humiliation, and 
for conscience 7 sake went to meet poverty and death. 
He became great because deliberately he turned his 
back upon greatness. Had he taken stock of his pos¬ 
sessions at Mt. Vernon, had he thought of the proba¬ 
bility of the confiscation of his estates and the loss of 
his head, had he hesitated because of the stigma that 
would attach to his name for turning against his king 
and his kind, had he said “No” to the invitation of the 
Continental Congress, he would have passed by Valley 
Forge and avoided Long Island; he would have escaped 
the treachery of his generals and the perfidy of Arnold; 
the Star-Spangled Banner might never have won an 
anthem; and he might have lived to a ripe old age, a 
landed gentleman in a white house above the Potomac. 


186 


What Men Need Most 


But February 22nd would not be a national holiday, 
and Byron would never have written, 

“The first, the last, the best; 

The Cincinnatus of the West.” 

For us there is but one conclusion. Follow the 
gleam; be true to the light that is given you; do your 
best; fill to the utmost the place that is opened to you; 
make a way if none appears; serve unselfishly; live for 
others; and you need not worry about who won the 
war or who receives the adulation of the passing hour. 
You may in full serenity of mind and in absolute con¬ 
fidence of soul leave the final judgment to posterity, 
and rest your case with God. 


20 

WHAT IS WAR?* 

Text: Psalm 46:9. “He maketh wars to 
cease unto the ends of the earth; he hreaheth 
the how, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he 
humeth the chariot in the fire ” 

What Is War? It is 'New York, riotously, glori¬ 
ously alive; her main artery flowing from building 
line to building line with a mighty human flood, a surg¬ 
ing river fed by every racial fountain of the earth. 
Men and women weeping; strong lads passing by. 

What Is War ? It is the ocean in a black night with 
the grey dawn coming out of the east, and icy blasts 
driving the whitecaps; a foundering ship; men cling¬ 
ing to fragments; babies floating upon cold breasts; 
and a periscope sinking out of sight. 

What Is War ? It is a hospital; the bustle of sur¬ 
geons; the smell of ether; the screech of brakes on a 
dead wagon; the smile of a nurse; a lad with bandaged 
eyes, calling for his mother. 

What Is War? It is London,—Piccadilly Circus 
after the “all clear” has sounded; “Bobbies” holding 
back a frenzied mob; in the distance shrapnel guns 
spraying the skies where the fleeing air raiders pass; 
bodies carried from a shattered building; an old man 
lifted from beneath an infant’s spattered crib,—his 
head a red, red poppy. 

* Conclusion of a sermon. 

187 


188 


What Men Need Most 


What Is War ? It is a troop train pulling out for 
Dover crowded with leave-expired men; a thousand 
sobbing, smiling people on the station platform; their 
faces in the sun, their hands thrown upward, in a 
never-to-be-forgotten spectacle of farewell. 

What Is War ? It is Paris; an old woman pushing 
a cart,—a dog harnessed beneath it. She stops by the 
curb, as an ambulance passes, and covers her eyes with 
a corner of her black shawl. 

What Is War ? It is a graveyard with more crosses 
than there are oaks in the King’s forest. 

What Is War? It is the new-class lads of seven¬ 
teen, marching arm in arm to the registrars; there are 
nosegays in their lapels, and they are singing the Mar¬ 
seillaise. 

What Is War? It is midnight in the railway sta¬ 
tion at Toul; Red Cross nurses sitting on their “roll¬ 
ups” waiting for the dawn; the sound of hostile motors 
overhead, and rich young voices humming, “Rock of 
Ages, cleft for me.” 

What Is War? It is a machine-gun company of 
the First Division marching up a battle road in front 
of Menil-le-Tours, singing in a whisper, “There’s a 
long, long trail a-winding.” 

What Is War? It is a mud-filled trench by the 
Meuse with a sky-lark calling above the night. 

What Is War ? It is a dugout at Rambecourt; forty 
men trapped like moles in a burrow and breathing 
through gas-masks; sweat pouring from armpits; a 
burning throat; the horrors of smothering; membranes 
seeping blood; bursting glands; the frenzy of a failing 
mind, and a man trying to remember the names of his 
children. 

What Is War ? It is six privates, three mules, and 


What Is War? 


189 


the timbers of an ancient church churned together by 
a high explosive; other men creeping out and picking 
up red fragments. 

What Is War? It is a barrage laid down upon an 
open field of Seicheprey; the earth opening, rocks and 
branches pouring upward; indescribable noises, an or¬ 
derly hurled high into the air and something that 
quivers like gelatine falling into a shell-hole half filled 
with water. 

What Is War? It is a father sitting in a swivel 
chair in a Hew York office and thinking of a football 
game that was indefinitely postponed. 

What Is War ? It is a young woman standing in a 
cottage door, a baby tugging at her skirts unnoticed; 
while she reads a cablegram to which there is no 
answer. 

What Is War? It is a mother sitting in an arm¬ 
less rocker, the rungs of which are marred by the nails 
of a boy’s boots, and looking out of a window that faces 
the east. 

What Is War? Taps over a grave,—if there is a 
grave. A speech in the Chambers, and withered for¬ 
get-me-nots. 

What Is War? It is the sum of all terror and all 
bravery; of all hates and all ministries; of all cruelty 
and all tenderness; of all horror and all glory. 

What Is War ? It is death; it is waste; it is futile. 

What Is War? I do not know, for I have seen it. 

But God pity us, if we deny, if we forget the courage, 
the sacrifice, the suffering, the glory, of those who 
offered themselves upon the red altars of our tragic 
yesterday. God pity us and turn His face from us, 
if we repudiate the faith in which the mother gave her 
son and in which the son gave himself. But God judge 


190 


What Men Need Most 


us forever if we profit not by these lessons learned in 
agonies colossal. 

I hate war. I know its folly, for I have watched it 
waste the substance of the world. 

I hate it with terror,—the terror of one who has 
known the sting of its torture and the frenzy of its 
fear. 

I hate it with passion,—the passion of one who has 
held its dying against his breast. 

I hate it with disillusionment,—the disillusionment 
of one who has gathered up its bloody fragments. 

I hate it with agony,—the agony of one who has sons 
to be numbered and daughters to be offered should its 
guns grow hungry again. 

I hate war. 

I hate it because of the young men it spits upon 
bayonets and scatters like offal across continents sown 
to passion and watered with blood. 

I hate it because of the child it orphans and the bride 
it widows. 

I hate it because of the betrothed it leaves unmated, 
the father it makes sonless and the mother it robs of 
the fruit of her womb. 

I hate war. 

I hate it because of the unborn slain in the loins of 
the potential fathers it destroys. 

I hate it because of the evil passions it unleashes to 
feed upon the innocent. 

I hate it because of the virgins it casts to the lions 
of lust. 

I hate it for the goodwill it destroys; the truth it 
perverts; the lie it exalts; the murder it decorates; the 
brotherhood it rapes, and the black damp of suspicion 
it hangs over all the councils of men. 


What Is War? 


191 


I hate war. 

I hate it for the crimson bubbles it blows over all 
the seas and for the poisoned breath it gives the wings 
of the wind. 

I hate it for the men it maims,—bodies mutilated, 
eyes blinded, limbs severed, faces shut up forever be¬ 
hind masks. 

I hate it:—hate it for its ruined cities; hate it for 
its polluted rivers; hate it for its desecrated altars; 
hate it for its fences of skulls that girdle the globe. 

I hate war. 

I hate it for the hearts it has broken. 

I hate it for the minds it has crazed. 

I hate it for the souls it has damned. 

I hate war ,—but I believe. 

And because I believe,—believe that the song of the 
angels over Bethlehem is a prophecy, believe in the 
ultimate might of right; because I believe in God and 
have cast the anchor of my faith behind Jesus Christ, 
the Prince of Peace, I seem to see the dawning of the 
day when the nations shall beat their swords into 
ploughshares, their spears into pruning-hooks, and 
when men shall learn war no more,— forever! 


21 


CIVIC GRAFTERS, OR PUTTING RELIGION 

INTO POLITICS 

Text: St. Matthew 22:21. “Render there¬ 
fore unto Ccesar the things which are Caesar s 
and unto God the things that are God’s” 

There are still some Christians who profess to believe 
that prophetic thunderings against specific evils have 
no place in the pulpit; who insist that the church 
should confine herself to preaching the great general 
truths of the gospel, leaving to men their application in 
public and private affairs without any other direction 
than that coming from the individual’s conscience. 

But Jesus Christ in His day was strikingly like the 
ancient prophets when He turned His attention toward 
evil. He was straight from the shoulder and definite. 
He did not limit His execrations to the dead citizens 
of Sodom, but fearlessly denounced the hypocrisy of 
the scribes and Pharisees of His own time; He was 
not satisfied when He had reminded His hearers of the 
wrong-doing of their remote ancestors; He drove the 
money-changers of His own generation out of the 
temple. 

Indeed, the Galilean was a very unconventional per¬ 
son, and He never ceased to be a humiliation to the 
chief rulers of the synagogue because of the abruptness 
of His speech and the utter candour of His criticism 
of evil whether He found it in low places or in high. 


i 


193 


Civic Grafters 

He made the “faith of the fathers” an immediate fact 
that fearfully embarrassed many of the descendants 
of the “fathers”; descendants who were quite willing 
to have sin in the abstract fearfully pommelled, but 
who yelled, “Stick to the Book,” and “Preach the Gos¬ 
pel,” when Jesus looked about searchingly and dis¬ 
cussed stealing from widows, making long prayers to 
be heard of men, and turning the house of worship into 
a den of thieves. 

We who come after the heroic prophets and their 
greater Lord have fallen upon easier times; for, al¬ 
though a few churchmen would even now limit the 
voice of religion to chanting hymns and making formal 
petitions, every council of Christendom declares the 
“whole gospel”; preaches the undivided message of 
straight limbs and clean hearts, denies that the obliga¬ 
tion to feed the soul relieves of responsibility to feed 
the body, and boldly announces that to inveigh against 
an evil principle, without smiting an evil fact, is 
neglect of duty. 

Jesus was seldom in harmony with the traditions 
and customs of the organised church of His day; He 
spoke too plainly and acted too directly. We are more 
fortunate. 

We are beginning to realise what He meant when 
He said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Re¬ 
ligion and Patriotism are brothers, and brotherhood is 
divine. A man cannot be a true Christian without 
doing his level best to be a true patriot. Christianity 
in politics will not unite the church with the state, but 
it will put religion into government, without which 
every government is insecure and trembles to a fall. If 
Christianity is not practical it is not even Christian. 



194 


What Men Need Most 

Jesus was not a theorist 5 He was the world’s first and 
greatest Democrat. He ceased not to declare a faith 
of service; a ministry of sacrifice; a divine, a sufficient 
redemption that not only raised the dead, but that 
brought to life the living dead; a ministry that in all 
of its ministrations used not the past, but the present 
and the future tenses. Jesus had less to say about the 
“home over there” than about the home down here. 
He knew that the man who pays his taxes, and looks 
after his immediate dooryard, would not abuse his 
privileges when admitted to the house “not made with 
hands.” Ah, and with what infinite tenderness He 
cried, “I go to prepare a place for you; . . . that 
where I am, there ye may be also.” How perfectly 
He related the spiritual kingdom, the triumphant fu¬ 
ture existence of the soul, to the humdrum responsi¬ 
bilities of our existence in the here and now! He 
spoke of gold-paved streets with far-eyed vision and 
without forgetting that His feet were on the sun-baked 
paths of Judea. 

Jesus would have supported Jane Addams in her 
work among the city’s poor,—and He does. Who 
doubts that He would set Himself openly and directly 
against a segregated vice district ? Who questions 
what ballot He would hold in a law enforcement cam¬ 
paign? The Son of God came with one theme, one 
passion, one task,—the bringing in of His Father’s 
Kingdom. And in preaching the Kingdom He could 
not avoid naming its enemies. He drew from them 
the cloaks in which they hid themselves from the peo¬ 
ple they deceived, branded their treachery, and de¬ 
stroyed their cunning devices of sophistry. 

When a political campaign is being waged and high 


195 


Civic Grafters 

principles are at stake, let us remember that a disser¬ 
tation on “good citizenship” is fine in its place, but 
that good government comes by eternal vigilance, cease¬ 
less agitation, and clean votes. 

The Son of God goes forth to war, and not the least 
of the battles is the battle of ballots! 

But there are men who would not steal a cent, who 
would not misappropriate a single dollar of a trust 
fund, who do steal liberty, who do take the priceless 
institutions of freedom without paying for them, who 
are civic grafters. 

It was one of these who said some years ago, during 
a campaign for State-wide prohibition in Vermont, 
“Prohibition will carry the State all right; and, if I 
wasn’t so busy, I should like to vote myself.” In the 
election which followed, he and his kind defeated pro¬ 
hibition, for, with one hundred thousand eligible voters 
in the State, only fifty thousand went to the polls, and 
a majority of the delinquents were registered in ter¬ 
ritory already dry through local option. 

Shame! Vermont of the Green Mountains! Ver¬ 
mont, out of which Ethan Allen came to walk with the 
immortals! The descendants of men who tied rags 
about their frost-bitten, bleeding feet, and marched 
through blizzards to die for liberty, sat by their fire¬ 
sides on a day when the honour of their commonwealth 
and the future of her unborn were at stake, and, with 
the supreme weapon of citizenship in their hands and 
the gage of civic battle thrown down, struck not a 
blow. The battle went to the enemy by default; it was 
not won, because it was not contested. Hats off always 
to the heroic men and women who struggled until the 
last minutes of the voting-day against unfair odds 


196 


What Men Need Most 


placed upon them by the indifference of those who 
should he their fighting comrades, but thrice shame 
upon those others who sell their neighbour’s birthright 
and their own for the pottage of civic laziness. 

For myself I have concluded that I have no right to 
enjoy, no right to accept for my children, the benefits 
of a free government unless I am willing to pay the 
price. 

The triumphs of civilisation into which we with our 
sons and daughters have entered were won by women 
and men who seriously counted the cost and ungrudg¬ 
ingly paid it. And these same institutions, unimpaired 
and strengthened, must be passed on to those who come 
after, by those who live now. 

Our whole fabric of government is dependent upon 
a political system conceived and established by the 
fathers, but for which we are now responsible. This 
system of government, changed from time to time to 
meet the needs of the advancing social order, halted at 
intervals by the shock of social revolutions from within 
and the impact of new world forces from without, re¬ 
mains to-day the most hopeful plan of government yet 
evolved for human progress. The key-stone of this 
system is the ballot. He whose hands fail to hold the 
key-stone in its place is traitor to the State, and should 
be made a man without a country. 

But does not the right to vote imply the privilege 
of not voting? No; rather the right to vote enjoins 
the duty of voting. 

The man who is born into a democracy, or becomes 
a part of it through due process of the law, not only 
comes into possession of the priceless boons of a democ¬ 
racy for which the torch-bearers of social justice fell 
and died; he also passes under the rod of social obliga- 



Civic Grafters 197 

tion, which strikes off personal liberty in the name of 
public welfare. 

Suppose that honest citizens generally remain away 
from the polls on election-day. And why should one 
man reserve for himself the privilege of easy indiffer¬ 
ence when for his neighbour to make the same reserva¬ 
tion would surely bring disaster upon the homes of 
both ? Let us face the facts. If throughout the United 
States frugal, sober, respectable men stayed away from 
the polls in the same proportion in which such men 
stayed away from the polls in Vermont on the election 
of which I write, how long would it take the govern¬ 
ment of which Washington is called the father and 
Lincoln the saviour, to disappear? 

Who is to be more despised, the man who goes to the 
polls and casts a vote for an evil thing, or the man 
called upright by his neighbours who does not vote at 
all ? I submit that the latter is the more dangerous 
of the two; that the indifferent private citizen who 
fails to vote is in the long run a far greater menace 
than the official who levies a tax on a brothel, or takes 
hush-money from a gambler. The corrupt public 
official reflects his constituency. The delinquencies in 
public office just about keep step with the indifference 
in private life; where the citizen does not neglect, the 
public official seldom betrays. 

Free government must eventually fail when men do 
not practise the truth that every voter is bound, on 
every offered occasion, unless physical disability pre¬ 
vents, to go to the polls and cast his ballot in such a 
way as to represent his sovereign sentiments on the 
issue before the people. 

In the exceedingly rare instances where a voter finds 
himself confronted by an election offering no candidate 


198 


What Men Need Most 


or principle representing his convictions, he can always 
write in his sentiments, or raise a voice of protest that 
will in effect offset his silence at the polls. 

Do I hear a voice repeat the iniquitous falsehood, 
“But my vote would not count / 7 or, “I should throw 
my vote away ?” 

There have been many times when an election was 
won by a single ballot, and elections have failed to 
carry for righteousness because one man stayed at 
home. 

But this illustration suggests an incidental consid¬ 
eration. The only man who ever throws his vote away 
is the man who does not vote at all, or who, voting, for 
some venal consideration votes against his convictions. 
I may never vote with a majority; but if my vote ex¬ 
presses my citizenship, delivers my own soul, it wins! 
And for a Christian it is just as much a religious duty 
to vote as to pray. The ballot is my political prayer. 
Jesus, the world’s “First Citizen / 7 spoke a truth that 
each succeeding generation has been much too slow to 
accept when He said, “Bender unto Caesar the things 
that are Caesar’s . 77 

What, then, is the conclusion? 

First of all, there should be a systematic campaign 
on the part of patriotic societies, fraternal organisa¬ 
tions, and all departments of the church to educate and 
inspire the citizens and the future citizens as to the 
responsibilities and privileges of citizenship. In this 
work editorials and news articles in papers and maga¬ 
zines, modern publicity methods, public meetings, 
study classes, and city surveys, should all be employed. 
Such a campaign would have a great opportunity in 
the patriotic observance of the Fourth of July. “Good- 
Citizenship Day,” should be made the platform for 


Civic Grafters 199 

nation-wide agitation against criminal neglect of the 
suffrage. 

Finally, every citizen not voting at a given election 
should be required to furnish to the election hoard the 
reason or reasons for his failure to vote, and every 
citizen not voting in two successive elections should be 
disfranchised for two years unless able to give physical 
disability as the cause of his delinquency. 

Another has described America as “a republic in 
which all men are sovereigns but in which no man 
cares to wear a crown.” But the crown of American 
sovereignty is the ballot, and every otherwise worthy 
citizen who fails to wear his crown denies his kingship 
and endangers his kingdom. 


22 


PERSONAL LIBERTY 

Text: St. Matthew 19:19. “Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself 

Many years ago a wise man said, “Your personal 
liberty ends where your neighbour’s nose begins.” 
Liberty without love is a dangerous thing indeed, and 
all the freedom of thought and action that we as indi¬ 
viduals possess, is ours because men and women have 
from time to time surrendered personal liberties in the 
interest of public welfare. No man could have unre¬ 
strained independence in any community where other 
men are, without injury to his neighbours, and there¬ 
fore without injury to himself, for by breaking down 
customs and laws agreed upon to protect all the people 
he would remove his own defence. 

There are times when liberty and license are con¬ 
fused : true liberty has as much of restraint and denial 
in it as of personal freedom. 

We might imagine one man alone in a wilderness 
as monarch of all he surveys, and absolutely free to do 
as his moods and passions direct. But even in such a 
case the man would soon find wild animals to dispute 
with him his occupancy of the jungle and his enjoy¬ 
ment of its fruits. And killing the animals would 
remove his source of fur-supply as well as his imme¬ 
diate danger. He could not wantonly destroy the great 



Personal Liberty 201 

trees without inviting killing drought; he could not 
build fires carelessly without bringing to himself dis¬ 
aster. Truly, no man lives unto himself alone. 

The lesson is a most comprehensive one, for it ap¬ 
plies equally well to every activity of life, private and 
public, and to all peoples. Perhaps we have come to 
associate Personal Liberty with strong drink because 
the friends and users of beverage alcohol have so per¬ 
sistently used the slogan “Personal liberty” to combat 
the forces of good citizenship and religion. But in 
meeting the false argument we have come to see clearly 
how the great principle of “self-surrender to be truly 
free” is at the heart of every relation of life. 

There can be no peace in the home, no profit in busi¬ 
ness, no justice in government, no safety in society, no 
happiness, no culture, no security anywhere, without 
frank and sincere consideration of others, their com¬ 
forts, their health, their prosperity, their rights. 

Jesus always put into the very heart of His message 
the “second commandment,” “Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself”; and, when He did so, He pro¬ 
claimed not only a Christian doctrine, but a law of 
social relations that cannot be violated without disaster 
to the violator. The merchant who sells spoiled fruit 
loses his trade; the hotel proprietor who serves food 
that he would not eat himself empties his dining-room; 
the foreman who curses his men arouses them to 
hatred and paves the way for a strike; the individual 
who keeps the better and best for himself loses the most 
priceless thing in the world—friendship. 

There is only one royal road to happiness, the road 
of unselfish, loving service. He has most who gives 
most and he is the best beloved who most loves. 

Every city has fire limits. In certain districts only 


202 


What Men Need Most 

fire-proof construction can be used; specifications that 
have to do with tbe minutest details must be complied 
with before even a foundation can be laid. Floors 
must be of concrete, roofing of slate. Why ? Are not 
frame houses respectable and attractive ? Certainly, 
but they could not be erected in the crowded districts 
of a city without endangering the entire community. 
They would be veritable tinder-boxes. Your present 
liberty, your right to build a frame house, thoroughly 
good of itself, and in its place, is entirely removed in 
the interest of public safety. 

A man who tries to commit suicide breaks the law. 
He is imprisoned if he survives. Why ? Because the 
effect of his action on society is bad, leading others to 
regard life lightly, setting a poor example for youth 
and exerting an evil influence on the morbid and the 
highly nervous. 

A man cannot drive where he will; he must obey the 
traffic laws. One poorly managed automobile often 
congests a crowded avenue for many minutes. 

You cannot eat what you will. If you think that 
you can, remember the future builds upon the present. 
To-day sanatoriums are crowded with dyspeptics who 
were the gormandisers of yesterday. 

Let us return to the quotation, “Your personal lib¬ 
erty ends where your neighbour’s nose begins.” I have 
a perfect right to swing my hands vigorously in front 
of me, and up and down, and round about;—a perfect 
right; but, if another man is within arm’s length of 
me and I swing my hands vigorously and heedlessly 
or angrily, there may be, and very likely will be, a 
perfect riot. 

Canadian thistles are beautiful when in their purple 
bloom, but you cannot grow them in your back yard. 


Personal Liberty 203 

The thistledown with seeds for many thistles will be 
carried by the autumn winds into your neighbour’s 
yard, and thistles are regarded by society as a pest. 

You have a right to walk the streets of your city, 
to appear unmolested in any public place—until you 
become afflicted with measles or some other contagious 
disease. 

Drink destroys the liberty of the drinker. See him 
stagger and fall. He can no longer direct his steps, or 
rule his limbs. Hear him shout and curse. He does 
not know what he is saying, and has lost command of 
his thoughts. His eyes are blinded; his moral sense 
is dulled; his baser passions are unleashed; his better 
self is chained. The drunkard is the most complete 
and pitiable slave of them all, in bondage as to body, 
mind, and soul. 

Drink destroys the liberty of the drinker’s wife and 
children, of his loved ones and his friends. Is the 
woman in ragged garments and with a bruised face, 
begging from door to door, free? Is the lad forced to 
wear the shame of a drunkard’s child, free? Is the 
broken-hearted parent who mourns the death of a dis¬ 
solute son, shot in a saloon brawl, free ? Are the 
friends of such a one free? 

Drink destroys the liberty of a nation, for a nation’s 
freedom is established upon the lives of the men and 
women who fill her homes and man her shops. She 
survives or perishes as they are strong or weak. 

Shall we continue to respect the “personal liberty” 
of those who would destroy themselves and us? Shall 
we continue to respect the “personal liberty” of those 
who would coin into money the tears of women and 
children and the cries of unfortunates possessed of a 
fiendish thirst they cannot master so long as the thing 



204 


What Men Need Most 


that arouses it survives because the laws of nation are 
violated ? Shall we continue to he deceived by the cry, 
“Personal liberty” when the cry is the demand, not 
for liberty hut for license ? Thou shalt love thy neigh¬ 
bour as thyself is the answer of Jesus Christ. 


23 


HOMESICK! * 

Text: I J ohn 5 : 4. “This is the victory that 
overcomes the world.” 

am homesick for the feathery bamboo waving in 
the soft spring breezes; for the yellow of the mustard 
and the purple blossoms of the soy bean back of beau¬ 
tiful Lake Side. I want to smell the wistaria that 
blooms on our hills and pick violets back of the rice 
fields. The white-sailed boats scudding over Timg 
Ting will be a welcome sight to me and I expect that 
I shall want to hug all my little yellow school kiddies 
when I get home!” 

Before me is a letter from a missionary soon to 
return to China after a year of furlough, and this is 
the closing paragraph. 

When I saw her first she was a black-eyed, black¬ 
haired, laughing school girl, and I was a little boy. 
We picked flowers together on the sunny hill-slopes of 
western Pennsylvania’s Alleghenies. We waded in 
the beautiful mountain stream that went singing 
through the golden summer days close by her home. 
Where the stones were smooth and the currents swift 
she held my hand and steadied me. She was a rare 
chum! I can hear her laugh to-day ringing clear as a 
sweet-toned bell, and the music of her full-throated 

* This chapter and the eight following contain a series of “short 
sermon stories.” 


205 


206 What Men Need Most 

song floats across the years and fills my thought with 
melody. 

When she went to China, some people talked about 
“buried talents,” “the pity of it,” “the disappointment 
they suffered,” and “the unreasoning mind of the 
devotee.” Eut she sailed away into the sunset and her 
tear-dimmed eyes were smiling, for her heart was fixed, 
and on her lips was the name of Him “whom having 
not seen she loved.” 

The years have passed and once again her face is set 
toward the hills of Tang. Her furlough is over and 
she is glad! She has watered with her tears the grave 
of her father who died breathing the name of his baby 
girl twelve thousand miles away. She has lifted her 
infant son from the failing mother arms that nestled 
her, and, standing by the side of the man “God gave 
her,” she has raised her eyes to the rice fields whither 
she journeys to her life’s work on the rainbow shores 
of Timg Ting. Again my eyes fall to the closing sen¬ 
tence of her letter. “I am homesick. ... I shall 
want to hug all my little yellow school kiddies when 
I get home!” 

She has forgotten the fever and the heat, the filth 
of diseased beggars, the insolent eyes with malice shot, 
the anguish of her friends who died, the bloody sword 
of the empire, the screaming of the rebel shells.—Ho, 
she has not forgotten! 

“0 Love, that passeth knowledge; this is the victory 
that overcomes the world!” 


24 

)C 

THE MAN WHO WAS PARDONED 

Text: Isaiah 55:7. “He will abundantly 
pardon” 

It was Christmas Sunday. Two hundred and fifty 
men and thirty women were assembled for religious 
services in the chapel of a County Work House. After 
the sermon, the wife of the Superintendent of City 
Missions very earnestly invited those present to pub¬ 
licly express any desire that might be in their hearts 
to live changed lives. 

It was a strange scene, and a strange setting for a 
testimony service. Crowded benches with grey-clad 
prisoners, guards on high chairs armed with heavy 
clubs, the matron with the women under her charge at 
the very rear of the room, and the speaker and singers 
on the platform. Men who do not know would say, 
“A "hard audience to reach/ 7 but no man ever spoke to 
a more responsive, a more earnest one. And by way 
of digression it is well to add that an audience of this 
kind is never harder to address than any other, and 
very frequently it is much more responsive than the 
average Sunday morning congregation of the church, 
providing the speaker talks to men, —weak, vile, 
broken, heart-sick, discouraged, sinning men—but men 
nevertheless. Many a prison message is ruined by 
being “fixed up 77 for criminals . 


208 


What Men Need Most 


To the appeal already referred to, perhaps fifteen 
men responded,—several coloured men, several aged 
men, and several very young men. Their testimonies 
were much the same, and every voice shook with emo¬ 
tion. One poor fellow dropped his head to the hack 
of the bench in front of him as he finished speaking, 
his body shaking with sobs. Nearly every man who 
spoke wept, and at least half of the great body of pris¬ 
oners were in tears. It was sternly, realistically, com- 
pellingly impressive. One lad spoke of his mother,—= 
“She taught me right,—she is dead. I got into bad 
company,”—and others followed his lead. Spiritually 
it was all elemental. There was positively no room for 
fine-spun theories, and nowhere was there the sugges¬ 
tion of doubt. Jesus Christ was the lamb of God “that 
taketh away the sin of the world.” Men, coarse of 
face, and with souls seasoned in the weathers of sin, 
but touched now by the Holy Spirit, were turning not 
to the theological dogma of one school or of another, 
but were crying out to “the lamb for sinners slain.” 

How heartening! How strengthening to weakening 
faith! What a relief from the laboured sentences of 
apologists! What an oasis from the starving plains of 
modern theological controversy! 

Are you depressed? Are you starving spiritually? 
Then go to the rescue mission, the church for “down 
and outs,” the penitentiary, the work house,—go there 
to see the bruised hands and feet, the bleeding, ragged 
brow, the opened side; go there to hear again and to 
rejoice with exceeding joy in the knowledge that 
“nothing but the blood of Jesus can wash away my 
sm.” 

And now a tall coloured man is speaking. He is 
very deeply moved. “I am fifty-two years old. I have 


The Man Who Was Pardoned 209 

been here eighteen months. My mother died years ago. 
ISTo one has ever visited me. I have no friends. I 
haven’t a friend in the world.” And he closed by 
expressing a desire to live a changed life, and the de¬ 
termination to find Jesus Christ. Immediately the 
Superintendent of the Work House arose, in the rear 
of the hall, and as soon as he could attract the atten¬ 
tion of the leader of the services, came to the front and 
with a touch of the dramatic in his words announced 
that he had selected the man who had just spoken, the 
man who had no friends, and without “political pull,” 
a coloured man,—to receive the annual Christmas par¬ 
don. “And,” he concluded, “I know that all the boys 
will rejoice with you, Henderson.” And they did! 
Henderson’s face beamed with the sun-burst of a soul 
doubly pardoned. 

It was a stirring, a never-to-be-forgotten moment. 
What a setting for the appeal that every man accept 
the Christmas pardon of Jesus Christ! The Super¬ 
intendent had only one pardon to bestow, but the 
Saviour of the world had for every man a pardon un¬ 
conditional, everlasting and free. It did not seem 
strange to those who saw and heard and rejoiced, that 
fully half of the three hundred grey-clad men and 
women lifted their hands in the closing moments of 
that memorable service, asking for the prayers of their 
brothers and sisters who had tasted and found good 
“the waters of salvation.” 


25 

LEAD ON, LORD JESUS! 

Text: St. Luke 28: 20. “Even unto the end 
of the world 

Softly the wind whispered through the sheltering 
houghs of overhanging trees. Kindly and warm the 
sun pressed through and lit the faces of a dozen men, 
young men, bowed in morning prayer. A providential 
place it was for such a group,—an Indian mound that 
nestles close down by the shores of lovely Lake Winona. 

But the men! Strong men they are, and from the 
four corners of the earth they come. An engineer from 
England and a college professor from the same coun¬ 
try ; a missionary from India and another from China. 
A college President from Oregon; a pastor from Kan¬ 
sas and a bank president from the same State. An 
accountant from Missouri. An Orphans’ Home Super¬ 
intendent from Ohio. An Indiana college man. A 
lad from a middle western farm. A boy from a freight 
office, and a carpenter. 

And these men are tendered and commanded by the 

same overwhelming impulse. It shines from their 

eyes and is in the grip of their strong hands. Their 

faces are glorified with it, and now they breathe it 

forth in sacramental prayer:—“To know Thy will, O 

Father, and to do my full best. To have no stain of 

guilt and no unsurrendered part in all my life, for 

210 



211 


Lead on. Lord Jesus! 

Jesus’ sake.” The bronzed disciple from beyond the 
sea pleads softly in the deep tones of a virile man, and 
the united voice of the mound is raised in the Amen. 

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw 
all me unto me.” He has drawn them, and they follow 
on! Hor curling waves nor tides nor hemispheres, nor 
gold, nor lusts, nor life nor death shall halt their tread, 
neither shall the gates of Hell prevail against them! 
Lead on, Lord Jesus,—manly, matchless, Holy One. 
Lead on! 


26 


“UNTO THE LEAST” 

Text: St. Matthew 25 : 40. “Inasmuch as 
ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even 
these least, ye did it unto me/' 

We were waiting for a train in a small junction 
town of Iowa, and had breakfasted in the “hotel.” 

While we sat in the office, which also served as par¬ 
lour and a smoking-room, an unfortunate lad came 
limping in. A pathetic figure he was, with bloodshot 
eyes, great head, and frail body,—one of the refuse 
of the world. He hurried by the loungers to the desk, 
and we heard him say, “Any work to-day?” And a 
ringing voice replied: “Sure, just waiting for you, 
Ben. Here’s the broom. Sweep off the walk.” 

Our interest was aroused, for it was very apparent 
that “Ben” couldn’t sweep, that his poor arms had 
scarcely strength to lift the broom. And what sort of 
a man would give such an unfortunate work, anyhow ? 
A handsome fellow he was, son of the proprietor. He 
stepped in while we were at breakfast, and responded 
to the greetings of the men about the place, with whom 
he seemed to be in good standing, by saying with the 
frank pride that warms the heart of a man who is far 
from home, that his wife and the baby were “doing 
nicely.” 

“Ben” clutched the broom, and wabbled out of the 

door, and with feeble strokes began a ludicrous effort 

212 


“Unto the Least” 


213 


to follow instructions. A pathetic sight it was. As I 
watched him, the young fellow at the desk watched too; 
and then, seeing that I had a friendly interest in the 
case, he came, and dropping into the vacant chair at 
my side, told me a story in which he himself, although 
he didn’t realise it, was the hero. 

The crippled, weak-minded lad was the rude jest of 
the town until the son of the hotel-keeper came home 
from college and broke a few ruffians’ heads. “It made 
me fighting mad,” he said, “to hear them plague the 
hoy. They let him alone now. But—do you know— 
what the chap wanted wasn’t protection or sympathy. 
He wanted to he treated like other people; and, when 
I found that out, I began treating him like a man. 
Every day he comes here and goes to work. You’ve 
sized him up; he can’t work; his poor legs bend like 
a willow and he is nearly blind; but, sir, he is happy 
now; do you hear him try to whistle? He goes with 
me to the station, and keeps his hand on the mail-cart. 
Thinks he helps. The travelling men are mighty kind 
to him, and he picks up a nickel now and then.” 

The young man was silent for a moment, and then 
he said, and in a tone of apology, “Before our baby 
was born I felt a trifle easier because I’d tried to be 
decent to Ben,—you ought to see our boy!” 

“Ben” limped along to the train with us; and, as 
the “Northwestern” whistled in, he shouted in a quav¬ 
ering voice, “Train west; all aboard.” 


27 


A HEART STORY 

Text: Proverbs 11:30. “He that winneth 
souls is wise/' 

Some years ago, under an oak-tree on the campus 
of my college, I put my hand on the shoulder of a 
friend, and said, “Frank, every day I am praying that 
you will become a Christian. 77 

It was the day of my graduation. The next morn¬ 
ing I started on a three-thousand-mile journey. 

Frank was a freshman, just at the turning of his 
young manhood. He would have been classed with the 
“awkward squad, 77 for he was overgrown and self- 
conscious; but he was big-hearted and clean and in 
every fine particular a gentleman. He very quickly 
developed into an exceptionally strong and handsome 
man. 

I came to know him well on the athletic field. He 
was not an athlete himself, when I first knew him, but 
many a time he has rubbed me down after a gruelling 
game or a heart-breaking finish. He was one of those 
who build the indefinable spirit of a college, and he 
was always ready to fill a place, however small and 
obscure. 

When honours came to him later, he bore them well. 

He became an associate member of the college Young 

Men’s Christian Association when I was its president. 

He had been on my prayer-list for months before I 

214 


215 


A Heart Story 

spoke to him about it; and when I did speak, on the 
occasion referred to, he gripped my hand and thanked 
me. 

During that year he became a Christian and united 
with the church. He wrote me very happily after his 
decision, and I experienced the quiet joy that comes 
with each fresh assurance that God answers prayer. 

I shall always be glad that one year after gradua¬ 
tion I returned for the commencement exercises of my 
college. In one year there are changes; but things are 
still pretty much the same, and the papers do not yet 
refer to you as a “former student.” 

Twelve months to a day from the time I said good¬ 
bye to Frank I greeted him again, and in the late 
afternoon we spent an hour together on the steps of the 
old Administration Building. We saw each other for 
a few moments on the following day, and then we sepa¬ 
rated for time, I am glad that there will be reunions 
in eternity. 

On leaving college Frank established himself in busi¬ 
ness in southern Oregon. He married most happily, 
and friends who were privileged to visit it tell me that 
his home was a delightful place. From its first morn¬ 
ing it had a family altar. He was very soon elected 
superintendent of the local Sunday school, and he be¬ 
came a pillar in the church. 

One afternoon during a summer vacation period my 
friend, with his wife and two associates, made an ex¬ 
ploring trip into the caves of the lava-beds near their 
camp. They entered the caves single-file, paying out 
behind them a line to direct them on their return 
through the intricate mazes of the dark chambers. My 
friend led the way, carrying in addition to his torch 
a loaded revolver to guard against a possible surprise 


216 What Men Need Most 

from the wild animals which are often found in the 
lava-beds. 

Suddenly, and in a way that will never be explained, 
my friend lost his footing; and, as he crashed down, his 
revolver was discharged; the bullet, entering an eye, 
pierced his brain. The light which he carried was 
extinguished by his fall, and, in the panic which fol¬ 
lowed, the other torch was destroyed. 

With no thought of herself, the young wife groped 
through the awful darkness until she found her loved 
one, and then with his head in her lap she waited 
through the long hours that brought no help. 

Pursued by a mad terror, her two associates had 
turned and fled when the lights went out, and their 
wild fears so robbed them of reason that they were 
unable to tell a coherent story of the tragedy or direct 
the rescuers, when they reached the camp. 

When the young wife was no longer able to detect 
a flicker of life in the dear form she clasped, she stag¬ 
gered through the long caverns to the light, and then 
led back the sad party that bore out the broken body 
of my friend. That she lived is remarkable; that she 
retained her reason is a miracle. 

I have written this to-day because I have been think¬ 
ing about Frank. In an old diary I found a letter his 
wife wrote me soon after the funeral, which was held 
in the old college town where they brought his body 
for burial among the scenes he knew as a boy and 
among the friends who loved him. It is a very brave 
and a very wonderful letter, and the last lines of it 
are these: 

“And I wanted you to know that in the morning, 
when we knelt in prayer, Frank always prayed for 
you.” 


217 


A Heart Story 

And now I understand! There were times when I 
was weak, and Frank’s prayers made me strong; there 
were times when I should have failed, but Frank’s 
prayers made me sufficient for the need. He came in 
to me across high mountains and wide prairies, and 
every morning he stood by my side. We got together 
by way of the Throne, and in the comradeship there 
was power. 

This evening at the setting of the sun, which is still 
shining on the far-away grave of the splendid fellow 
God took off my prayer-list, I begin to know what the 
wise man meant when he said, “He that winneth souls 
is wise.” 


28 


“HE DID IT!” 

Text: St. John 10:10. “I am come that 
they might have life." 

A great crowd filled tHe Canadian Pacific railroad 
station at Winnipeg, Manitoba, on a February morning 
in 1915 when the writer hurried into the waiting-room 
and made inquiries about his train. Wounded soldiers 
from “over-seas” were expected, and their loved ones 
and friends were waiting tremulously to receive them. 

We stood strangely thrilled to see the glad reunion. 
There were cheers and tears and there was laughter— 
these latter two are so close that in a supreme moment 
they always mingle—when the lads in khaki came 
through the gate. Ah, what a scene it was! Broken 
bodies gathered into the embrace of mothers who had 
waited so long, drawn faces covered with the kisses of 
sisters and sweethearts, wearied forms borne away in 
the arms of fathers and brothers. 

There were times when I could not see for my weep¬ 
ing—and no man was so weak as to wipe his tears 
away. The pegging of the crutches, the crying and 
the shouting flowed together in a great “Amen.” 

A little group close by me especially attracted my 
attention. A mother and father and three sisters—or 
perhaps one was more than a sister—welcomed a lan¬ 
guid fellow who, while his body bore no visible hurt, 
told of the awful gases with twitching muscles and 

sunken chest. How the boy—he was hardly twenty— 

218 



“He Did It!” 


219 


drank them in, and how their eyes, after the riot of the 
first greeting, devoured him! For a long moment they 
stood in a silence that was in effect the mightiest 
shout. 

And then the soldier turned, and cried eagerly: 
‘Jim, where is Jim? Jim, old chap!” And Jim 
was hard by. I had noticed him before as he came 
hobbling through the gate with our friend whose loved 
ones had so quickly seized him. A leg gone close 
against his body, he had been leaning heavily upon his 
crutch, looking—wistfully, I thought—at the little 
group that swallowed up his companion. No one had 
come to meet him. 

At the calling of his name he smiled and took a step 
forward, and then happened one of the most dramatic 
incidents that I have ever seen. The boy with the 
hollow cheeks reached his hands toward the crippled 
soldier; his face flushed until it was afire; and he said, 
“He did it, mother; he did it.” With a cry that no 
words have yet been found to express, that mother 
swept across the space between her and the friend of 
her boy, put her arms about him, crutch and all, and 
kissed him as she had kissed her own son. Nor were 
the father and the sisters far behind. It was as though 
the first scene of a great human tragedy had been acted 
again. Over and over that great-bodied father ex¬ 
claimed: “God bless you, sir! God bless you, sir! 
God bless you!” 

Here is the story. It was the first days of the gas¬ 
sing on the Somme. One morning, after several hours 
of preparatory shelling, the battalion of which these 
two young men were members was ordered out of the 
trenches and across “No-man’s-land” to take the Ger¬ 
man position directly in front. 


220 


What Men Need Most 


But there was no chance. The artillery had not com¬ 
pleted its work. The wire entanglements still barred 
the way. The young Canadians with their cutters and 
with their bare hands vainly tore at them, hurling their 
poor bodies hopelessly into their barbed mazes. The 
machine guns poured in a very vomit of steel,—and 
then came the gas! 

Close along the ground rolled that merciless cloud; 
with fiendish cunning it filled every depression, seek¬ 
ing out the wounded that had fallen, and giving them 
a grave-shroud from the very torture-room of hell. 

The broken remnant of the battalion was called back 
to its trench. It was then that Jim, turning as he 
rolled to safety, heard his friend scream, and saw him 
plunge headlong into the awful fumes. With a mad 
fury he tore ofi his shirt—it was before the masks came 
—ripped it through, bound it about his face, and be¬ 
fore the hands of his comrades could restrain him he 
sprang again into the open, straight into the gas and 
shell. 

It was all over in a moment. Like a wild animal 
Jim came crawling back, dragging his comrade. He 
could not walk, for his right leg had been mangled 
horribly in that first mad leap; but back he came! 
“He did it! He did it !” 

Ah, I shall never forget that morning in Winnipeg! 

To-day I am thinking of the glad reunion when the 
mother took again her son and poured out the grati¬ 
tude of her heart upon his saviour. And in thinking 
of them I have come to think of that other soldier, that 
other saviour, the Saviour of the world, who gave not 
a limb, but His life, to bear me, to bear us all, back 
to the trench of safety. Ah! “He did it! He did 
it! He did it!” 



29 

MY FIRST PRAYER 


Text: St. Matthew 11:24. “What things 
soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye 
receive them and ye shall have them ” 

I do not remember when I began to pray. I lisped 
that prayer at my mother's knee, and the bedside peti¬ 
tion was fixed in my life before the days of my earliest 
recollections. But I very vividly remember my first 
prayer. 

I was a junior in college at the time, and as the 
result of a local oratorical contest had been selected 
to represent my institution in the State oratorical 
contest. 

On Tuesday, three days before the night of the great 
event, which on this occasion was to take place in our 
own city, I became violently ill with chills and fever. 
The doctor diagnosed the case as grippe, with a strong 
inclination toward pneumonia, the result of a very 
foolish bicycle ride too early in the season, which re¬ 
sulted in ever-exertion and over-heating. 

I shall never forget the expression of disappoint¬ 
ment that clouded my professor's face as he stood look¬ 
ing down upon me, the wreck of his oratorical hopes. 
My own chagrin and self-chiding were harder to bear 
than the physical hurt, for I knew how intense the dis¬ 
appointment of my college associates would be when 
they learned that through my carelessness the institu- 


222 


What Men Need Most 


tion we loved would not be represented in the contest 
that she was to entertain. 

Ah, how black a night that Tuesday night was! In 
the moments between delirious dreams I thought of 
Friday, and every dream was a nightmare in which 
angry students rolled great weights upon me. 

Early on Wednesday morning my small white dog 
crept into my arms, and shoved her moist nose under 
my chin. She was a real comforter. Impulsively I 
dropped my hand on her head. As I did so, I turned 
slightly, and my eyes rested upon an old-fashioned 
green wall-motto, lettered in silver, that hung just 
above the wainscoting, directly across the room. I do 
not remember that I had ever noticed that motto be¬ 
fore. The words of the text fastened upon my feverish 
brain,—“There hath not failed one word of all His 
good promise.” And the suggestion flashed through 
my mind: “Try it out. Pray for another chance, a 
fighting chance.” Without a single mental reserva¬ 
tion, I floundered over on my face and with the fever 
singing in my ears prayed . 

Ah, if ever a young man prayed, I prayed that morn¬ 
ing, just for a fighting chance to represent my college 
on Friday night. I did not pray for victory; for other 
men and other colleges were to be considered, but I did 
pray for strength to command my wabbling limbs and 
for nerve to go through with my oration somehow. It 
was no formal supplication that I made, and there was 
no searching for choice phrases and pleasing sentences. 
The call that went out from my soul that morning was 
an unstripped appeal for help. 

There on that cot in the old sitting-room at home, 
for the first time in my life, I “prayed through.” 


223 


My First Prayer 

When assurance came, and it did come as clearly and 
unmistakably as the doctor came a few minutes later, 
I knew that I should deliver my oration. The physi¬ 
cian laughed and humoured me when I told him, and 
then reached down for my pulse. Other friends were 
sure that it was a mere whim of the delirium. But I 
knew. Mother believed, and the dear old professor 
understood. 

Wednesday was a very trying day; Thursday was 
easier; but on Friday morning I was utterly miserable. 
For the first time since the message of the old green 
card had given me new hope, I was despairing. But 
again my eyes turned to the motto, and the silver words 
fairly leaped across the room to me, “There hath not 
failed one word of all His good promise.” And I slid 
to the floor, and gripped that rock of truth as a drown¬ 
ing man lays hold upon the offered line of escape. 

When the doctor came, he found my fever broken. 
He was very much surprised, and said that the sudden 
subsiding of the temperature accounted for my un¬ 
usual weakness. I reminded him that it was Friday; 
and then he resolutely shook his head, and gave me 
an unconditional refusal. But I went through the 
day with the words, “There hath not failed one word 
of all His good promise,” strengthening me; and at 
five o’clock in the afternoon I sent for the doctor 
again. This time he heard my ultimatum, and I was 
fully attired when I delivered it. 

Like the good fellow he was—for he loved the old 
school too—he set to work to help the Almighty get 
me in shape for my fifteen minutes on the platform. 
The drawing had placed me first; there were six speak¬ 
ers, and the man of science nursed nature along to 


224 


What Men Need Most 


have me as strong as I could possibly he on the 
minute, and if possible strong enough to go through 
that crucial quarter of an hour. 

But the arm that I leaned upon that night was not 
the arm of the doctor, and it was not the arm of the 
dear old professor, much as he meant to me. And 
when I finally got to the platform, and for an instant 
the lights went out, and a wall of blackness was be¬ 
fore my eyes, it was “There hath not failed one word 
of all His good promise,” that turned the lights on 
again. 

I went through the fifteen minutes, and walked off 
the stage and out of sight before I collapsed. God 
kept His word; I had offered up my first prayer; for 
the first time in my life I had prayed through■, and 
ever after I was to have the assurance of the vital fact 
of intercession. 

Many times since that day when I tossed in pain 
upon the couch in the sitting-room back at college I 
have turned my eyes to the old green wall-motto and 
it has never failed me. From that day to this I have 
not doubted my right to have an answer to every 
prayer. The desired answer has not always come. 
Many prayers have been answered in the negative, and 
some answers have been long delayed; but in times of 
spiritual stress, when doubts troubled, and discourag¬ 
ing fears all but defeated faith, as well as in those 
more numerous even days when hope held an open 
way, the message of the old green card has triumphed. 

Yesterday I came upon the motto at the bottom of 
a battered trunk that I was preparing for cremation. 
I found it packed away with basket-ball posters, a pair 
of running “spikes,” two white gloves that my mother 


225 


My First Prayer 

never wore, and an old papier-mache horseshoe that 
reminded me of an athletic struggle in far-away 
Seattle. 

This morning I brought the card to the city, and 
had it framed. I have a place for it on the wall of 
the living room where my children play. 


30 

A FATHER’S DILEMMA 

CHESTNUTTING WITH THE BOYS VS. THE WORLD*S 

SERIES ALONE 

Text: Philippians 1:23. “For I am in a 
strait betwixt two !” 

It was the morning of Thursday, October 12, 1916, 
in Boston, Massachusetts,—Boston, famous for a hun¬ 
dred shrines of American history, and distinguished 
as the greatest educational, literary and musical 
centre of the Hew World, but on that day “stark mad’ 7 
with baseball enthusiasm. 

The “Red Sox” had soundly trounced the Brooklyn 
“Trolley-Dodgers” on the preceding day in the fourth 
game of the post-season series for the world’s cham¬ 
pionship. All fandom,—and this title includes pretty 
nearly all the one hundred and ten million inhabitants 
of the United States and Canada—was breathing in 
short, staccato gasps and waiting for the umpire to 
announce the rival batteries for the last game. 

The day was flawless, an open sky without a cloud; 
air crisp without being sharp, and a sun that gave 
every blushing leaf an added tinge of gold. 

I sat in the offlce busied with some of the extras 

that would not respect even a holiday. With unusual 

226 


A Father's Dilemma 


227 


deliberation I signed my letters; and finally, with the 
small tasks all done, I settled back for a finish fight 
with myself. 

I wanted to see that game. Every passing moment 
added to my desire and increased the fever in my 
blood. But it was a holiday, a day when the feet of 
- children do not tramp the corridors of schoolhouses; 
and this particular holiday was the first of the year 
with chestnuts on the ground. 

I knew that two small boys and their wee sister were 
waiting in the hall at home for the telephone bell to 
ring and for a man’s voice to say: “Hello, there; get 
your sweaters on; have the buckets ready. I will be 
out on the one o’clock.” 

And then the telephone took my attention, and an 
impatient man yelled in my ear: “Hey, you! Ho you 
want this ticket ? There are seventeen thousand insane 
men and boys trying to take it away from me. Speak 
quick, or I shall be assassinated.” 

It was my friend talking, and he was holding a place 
for me to the last moment. 

The fight was all over, for I said in a voice of sub¬ 
lime hypocrisy: “Sorry, old chap; but I have an im¬ 
portant engagement. Many thanks. I will do as 
much for you another time.” 

I made the “one o’clock” after edging through the 
crowds bound for the Braves’ Field. Trying to feel 
cheerful, I found a seat. The car was not crowded 
going out! At the Back Bay an old man came in, and 
with a cry of amazement dropped down by my side. 
After carefully adjusting his glasses he sized me up, 
and then said with fine scorn: 

“Well, I thought that every man on the verdant side 
of seventy and not under legal restraint was on his 


228 


What Men Need Most 


way to the ball-game. You are not seventy, and you 
don’t look like an escaped inmate.” 

I replied: “Your diagnosis is correct and compli¬ 
mentary. I am going chestnutting with my boys.” 

The old man dropped his jester tone, lost the banter 
from his eye, and said brusquely: “Sir, I would give 
a million dollars for the chance to go chestnutting with 
my boys. I used to dream of that sort of thing,—but 
the boys never came.” 

We sat in an understanding silence for the twenty 
minutes that elapsed before the conductor shouted, 
“Newton,” and the old man dropped off. 

There was length to my stride and a spring in my 
step when I turned into my own street, and with the 
indescribable thrill that a man never knows until the 
fingers of his little ones rest convulsively in his hands 
I greeted the children as they came shouting to meet 
me. Such a bedlam of voices! 1STo chance for a single 
minute of postponement. Without changing a thread 
I was off to the woods. 

What an afternoon it was! I lost my fountain pen, 
and accumulated a stock of thistle burrs larger than I 
gathered of chestnuts. A club from the hands of my 
first-born, on its return trip from the upper reaches 
of a tree, contributed a lump on the top of my head 
to the miscellaneous collection of the day. 

Coming home, the “little lady” lost one of her shoes, 
and with tearful intercession beguiled me into carry¬ 
ing her. We were late for supper, and I was too tired 
to eat any of it. The children were sure they had had 
a glorious time. The dining-room sounded like a 
circus-tent, and with each voice crowding in on the 
others the three told their mother all about the great 
adventure. 


A Father's Dilemma 


229 


Any regrets that might have troubled me earlier in 
the day were all forgotten when one of the lads, hug¬ 
ging me about the knees, said in a sudden burst of 
confidence, “Daddy is all right, mother; feel the lump 
on his head.” 

In the morning a friend with malicious enthusiasm 
gave me an illuminated description of the game I had 
missed, and the only one I could have seen. But he 
was disappointed. My lack of remorse was too evi¬ 
dently unaffected and too genuinely sincere as I said, 
“Well, I went chestnutting with the children. Feel 
the lump on my head!” 


31 


THE LAND OF TIME ENOUGH 

Text: I Corinthians 7:29. “The time is 
short/' 

I know a land of vast and silent places, a land where 
mountains, pine-clad and well-watered, break up into 
foothills and go down to meet the desert; where the 
cottonwoods mingle with the pihons and cedars, and 
the sage grows rank on the mesas; a land of all- 
encircling and never-failing sunlit skies, of sunsets 
that fling upward all the colours of the spectrum in 
faultless blendings to light the sapphire dome of God’s 
own Taj Mahal, and where the moon, like a galleon of 
enchantment, floats upon a shoreless silver sea. 

A land of yesterday, whose forests are frozen in 
crystal and preserved in agate, where the paths of 
Coronado follow down a beaten way of peoples whose 
cliff castles were old when Egypt raised her pyramids. 

A land of to-morrow, where presently a golden sea 
will flow across the sands and where orchard isles will 
raise their emerald shores above the flood of grain. 

Here one may see the children of the past, a garish 
remnant of a race, and feel the furtive eyes of wild 
things that steal away along the trail. Here one may 
lose himself and dream. 

Stand there upon some lava hill, and look away a 

hundred miles into the south. A blue haze marks a 

tree-fringed crest, where eagles soar along the desert 

230 


231 


The Land of Time Enough 

rim. Beyond is what the Indians called a garden of 
the gods, and onr fathers, when they first beheld it, “A 
valley of paradise.” Streams flow from hidden death¬ 
less springs. Rich grasses grow along the floor of 
flowered, deep ravines. There are forests, nut-bearing 
vines, wild fruits, and half a hundred kinds of game. 
As the wild life of the alkali desert seeks the scant 
shade of the rocks and moistens its parched throat with 
the slime of the brackish pool, it turns its burning eyes 
toward the rim of that valley; and man, caught in the 
dread heat of the plain, rides hard through the night 
to bring his beast to its rich meadows and himself to 
its fruits and its rest. 

The tale runs that in times past only those found the 
trail that leads below who had not finished their ride, 
who had yet much distance to cover, but who were 
spent with the heat and done nigh to the death. These 
found the way, and to these came the strength to finish 
their course. Strange to relate, all who ever came out 
of the valley lived forever, and were forever unhurried. 

There is another Paradise Valley lying just over the 
rim, and I have named it the Land of Time Enough. 

From the heat of the day, from the toil and the 
grind, from the long hours of pain, from the disap¬ 
pointment and sorrow, from the deep mystery of hu¬ 
man existence, I lift my eyes where the eagles soar 
over the crest, and ride on toward the Land of Time 
Enough. 

Time enough to do the many things we never yet 
have touched; time enough to finish all those things 
that are but half-begun; time enough to read the books 
that call to us from out their shelves, to sit before the 
pictures we have hurried by, to hear the master songs 
we never yet have heard; time enough to romp with 


232 


What Men Need Most 


children down their paths of play; to listen to the 
dreams of daughters and the hopes of sons; to ramble 
in the fields of memory with those we a lost awhile”; 
to know our friends; time enough to walk with kings 
of thought, to talk with Christ; time enough to do 
and dare, to live and love. 

This is 


The land toward which I ride, 

The land beyond the rim, 

Beyond the Great Divide, 

The land of “Enter In.” 

And I hear the voice that answers all my questions say, 
“Let not your heart be troubled. ... In my Father’s 
house are many mansions. . . . I go to prepare a place 
for you.” 

This is the Land of Time Enough. 


THE END 


H 157 82 












'»SL 'o'. 7 * .A 


. « • o„ v> *> 

* - R ^ . * 0 ^ A 

°. *U* ; 

/ «V> ^ °o 

r % u.V 'O* 

<<y * 

> t*° v «.*^Lt *., 

^ «*~<* ' 
«5 0 ip vv 

.r o„ *>»s§lv ,*■ %, \ 

. • * * *. O <\> 

* ^ jP K 

* 


«* '£*. a"^’ 

• ^ & * 

: ^ 5 ? 

* 




_K * '^CA/— % ' /, P 


*'T7i* .G 1 


O' *• 




*"v* ^ 

*“ . r\ £~ 


A . 6 J^% % 

«b^ ' ‘ “ 




„ —— > * 

CV 4 

V .v7i'„ o, . 9 * f' 

* Vs 9 

’ ♦ 3? u <£\ o vjff* A.V *$» 

* < 6 ^ <> *0 * »4 A <f ♦< 

,0 % . • k # * 4 At c O « 0 4 ^ 

* .»;* .; “ ■ 

^VviP^ ^ 

- > V v .vv,, "o . 0 * w ^ * A* 1 

: ^ :Jrnk\ ' 

° C,^ ,J ?n o l/TV^'J^NN^ * < V«^V, a % f a C, A - * 

;• A? *v oVOT* <V \ ^ * ft 0 

'V '••>** A 

% -‘J-to O 

% - /> ^“ - O , 1 ” 

* ^ <4* 







^ V* * ,: 

>. V/ -V 


• + 



A o* ; 


o V 


I « £*3 ^ „ 

4 ,<«V ■ 

«G V \b, 

<?* °o * 

: 0 ^ * 


# T, 


> -O . 

• ^ * • ■ 0 " a v 

• *'* % y 



* aV*^\ ^ 

* ^ , 


* 4 ^ wv' y:> 0 ; 

* ^ <<• *^V?* A ^3, 

0 •■•* ^ ^ at'*,. 


O • » 


■\ ;’ 

** c5* '^vO* 0 

/ At o 


• ^ , C ♦ 

*. ^ 0 < .* 

* A ^ * 

4 J O. 

' f 1 jS> *1*. * * * 0 

• !.v?* ^ v s . 

4 <L^ ei* . 

<7rr«* *(y 


A o # '% ^ 

- 0 / • - 


■° . t- 0 ^ 


<h._ *77.-.*' & 


* I ■• 



c\ . 9 * o ,#o - ^ A .•* 

*, "V ,<£ % »Vv4#/k« . ^. , 1 ^ . l ^S 


V* » vV*'* Deacidified using (he Bookkeeper process 

K * • Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

* * ^ ^ « Treatment Date: Mav 2nnR 


■^o 5 


q> T ^ ^ 11 eauiwin uciie. may ^uUb 

-° 4 A % .i55^. ^ PreservationTechnologie: 

<* .E'.V,l// l y>^> "* .-A A' 4 <CSXV\\n s %^«* A WORLD LEADER IN PiPFD Docccmr.r.A 



A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIO 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 


(724) 779-2111 










,.../%••*” v*WV*V 

% . \s 'Ok* v* * 


U%.,4 


vA 


.@|K/ •^'V '.W/ * v ^ *.'«?,• >" '« 

vfvT* 4 Cr ***** A 

0 ***4 <*V .Or 4 • V-f* 

. o 0 *v^% °»„ A 4, .’^farf*. V . C <*>^5 


V *. 





> V ^ ‘.r*®*’ ^4’ 

.- '.Warn- a*, iwAsaw*. 

* ♦♦ ^ * 


^ *•>’*' A- -;^, • • •» 

* ♦ r^M/k * ^ * 

vv 

f 7 ^ y> oji 

-<J> **••* ^ cr # ‘ C A!% c> ^ # o®*- 
o * ^■s5\^V'i\4t. #, .« >« 0 ♦ !i?riY//7 t j-~ *. v * / o * <5^Nv\rr 




r oK 


*>0 


jP TV 

0 ^ ♦*#-»• * 
-MO, V- -* 



v > 4 *: 


: -W 1 : 

* $ V • 

,* »V ^ * 
• 6* ^ 


» 

v^V 'v* Tr; 



& 



0*1 



A <a • • * w a' 

a* .^‘. U C° -•* 
•^o & ’*’’*■*■ <& 


k » • 




• • ' 


.* »° ^ 

• -i» \ *W 

*> V s ..*£». '<** 

*» ^ A* '£&&• %' ,' 

o r^/v * •* *j' 9 

v«* 


,v<* °W% I\5*v A < 

'.ww* ** -.skt/s > ■**. *y<#vf« * 

• * A *, \3» *o « 0 * A 

*o « 4 * A 'Cx ^ » « * J\“ vIa A% a ( 4 

o ^ ^ / S'jtjtoc °o 4 ** ,* 6 ^ 





v*o 


oK 


^ :Mm^ 




“. “*0 ^ ^•• r \ ti 


gA 4.-^ 


'o VI 

k 0 ^ 


A o' 


.-«• 









































































































































































